LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



n c 



Shelf T 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION: 

OR, 

DISSERTATIONS 

CONTAINING SUGGESTIONS FOR A 

System of Biblical Interpretation, 

BASED ON 

CATHOLIC-EVANGELIC OR BROAD-CHURCH 
PRINCIPLES. 

THE INTRODUCTION 

BY 

REV. CHARLES P. MCCARTHY, 

FORMERLY FOR SEVEN YEARS THE CLERICAL SECKETARY OF THE OLD BIBLE 

SOCIETY; CURATE OF ST. BARNABAS', KINGS SQUARE, AND EVENING 

PREACHER OF ALL SAINTS', ISLINGTON, LONDON. 



In Necessariis Unitas in Dubiis Libertas ; in Omnibus Caritas" 

U3./1). 

JJew York ; 
SHEA & JENNER, Publishers and Booksellers, 

No. 75 NASSAU STREET. 

x88o. 









s 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by 

Rev. Chas. P. McCarthy, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



WA 



wash 



CONTENTS. 

I. PREFACE. 
II. INTRODUCTION. 

III. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

IV. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

V. SIN. 

VI. THE INCARNATION. 

VII. THE ATONEMENT 
VIM. JUSTIFICATION. 

IX. THE CHURCH. 



PREFACE. 



TT is clear that the Christian Faith must now be maintained by 
-■- new arguments and new expositions of its first principles. 
The numerous and wonderful revelations of science have, so to 
speak, furnished new eyes to the understanding, and cleared the 
intellectual horizon far and wide. We breathe an entirely new, 
scientific, moral, intellectual and religious atmosphere. The old 
arguments and persuasions which once sufficed to establish 
and perpetuate popular religious convictions, have no longer 
any influence on the great mass of intelligent and thoughtful men. 
For centuries the teachings of Theologians have been in the high- 
est subject of human thought miserably in discord with reason 
and fact. The old modes of thought, like the old conceptions, 
are fast becoming obsolete. Christian truth and life in the Church 
can only be saved by the revindication and reassertion of the 
fundamentals of the faith in a form adapted to the new state 
of thought. To further this end these Dissertations have been 
compiled and material gathered from every source and form 
found convenient. All lovers of the truth will gladly welcome 
every movement tending to clear the faith once delivered to the 
saints from the conventional glosses which now obscure it, and 
to set it forth in its primitive purity, simplicity and attractiveness. 
Let it be understood that there is no attempt within the nar- 



via PREFACE. 

row limits of these "Dissertations" — which should be read in 
course to be justly comprehended, — to explain in all their varied 
aspects the several doctrines treated, or to defend revealed religion. 
The intention Js simply to emphasize and point out inconsis- 
tencies in current theology, and to give hints and suggestions along 
a certain line of thought, for a system more in accord with modern 
ideas and feeling. Much of our standard theology is like an old 
field that must be ploughed and planted again, that it may yield an 
ampler and better harvest. In the middle ages the mind of 
Europe was bound by the two-fold and closely linked chain of 
ecclesiastical subjection and doctrinal orthodoxy. The effect 
of the Reformation was to break one strand of this two-fold 
cord, leaving the other as strong as ever. It freed its adherents 
from subjection to the Church's government, but it enforced 
by the whole weight of its authority a dogmatic creed no less 
minute and strict than the old one. 

Christendom is now longing for a new reformation, not in the 
direction of the narrow bigotry of Protestant Sectarianism, not for 
the exchange of one task-master for another, but for the broad and 
glorious libert)' of Catholic Evangelic truth, which teaches that 
Christianity is not so much a matter of polemics, as a living power 
in the hearts and lives of men. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The following Dissertations are not original in their concep- 
tion, the plan of the writer having been, in the expression of 
his own thought to appropriate the clearest and most scholarly- 
form of words in which this thought has been embodied by the 
best writers in the present or past ages, and then mould after 
careful collation, selection and revision, the materials thus ob- 
tained into a methodical and harmonious exposition of his 
theological convictions on the primary doctrines of the Chris- 
tian Religion, and thus supply in a compact form, suggestions 
for a more Scriptural system of theology based upon a broader, 
more Catholic and more Evangelic exegesis of the Sacred 
Writings than. has hitherto prevailed. After years of care- 
ful study and reflection, he finds himself animated by a 
deeper and more profound reverence and veneration for 
the Holy Scriptures, and a growing and uncompromis- 
ing antagonism with what is called Protestant orthodoxy, 
while his convictions of the enduring nature of the Church of 
Christ, and of its primitive Episcopal organization as one prin- 
cipal channel through which the spiritual blessings of the Gos- 



io INTRODUCTION. 

pel of Christ have been and are being dispensed to the world, 
have been confirmed and strengthened. 

Knowing as I do the skill and indefatigable industry which the 
compiler and formulator of this treatise has expended in consum- 
mating his plan, and having critically perused his work in letter 
press manuscript, I have urged its publication in the present lim- 
ited form, feeling assured that it will be made instrumental in 
helping Christian brethren in the adoption of clearer, more ra- 
tional and more practical views on the chief doctrines of the Chris- 
tian Religion, and that likewise it will assist a large number of 
honest skeptics who have been driven from the Churches by 
the irrational theories which are still sustained by so-called 
Protestant Orthodoxy. 

The following are only a few testimonies describing our pre- 
sent religious condition, and showing the need of some such 
reformation as that outlined in the disquisitions which follow 
this introduction. I have reserved the names of my clerical 
brethren whose statements I quote, having satisfied myself as to 
the substantial accuracy and truthfulness of their brave and hon- 
est words, and in deference to the opinion of the compiler and 
author of this volume, who himself desires to remain unknown. 
On the second Sunday of the present month, a popular 
preacher, and the pastor of a leading Presbyterian Church, 
stated in the course of his sermon, " that out of 450,000 Protes- 
tants who were resident in the city of New York, only 125,000 
ever went to a place of worship. Of these there were 83,000 
professing Christians, 70,000 of whom kept their hands in their 
pockets, and did nothing to help their sinful neighbors, conse- 
quently the whole work of the Protestant Churches of the 



INTRODUCTION. u 

city rested upon about 13,000 active members." He further 
stated that the " real trouble " consisted in the fact that Chris- 
tians " built up a church organization to make a show in the 
world, and to go once or twice a week to enjoy good singing 
and good speaking." This sad and humiliating confession was 
made after industrious enquiry and sober reflection. With stat- 
istical accuracy it proclaims the failure of the Puritan forms of 
Protestant Christianity amid a population numbering about a 
million of inhabitants. A failure remarkable in its character 
for several reasons. A failure for which there is no excuse. 
The Protestant organizations of this city are simply colossal. 
The Protestant clergy, who are the spiritual rulers of these or- 
ganizations, are not inferior in learning, ability, piety and inde- 
fatigable industry (in proportion to their number), to the clergy 
of any Protestant metropolis in the world. And with two ex- 
ceptions, unique in themselves, and resident ministers of the 
city of Brooklyn, I know of none who are better paid, and 
whose means of usefulness are greater. The church edifices 
are for the most part fair specimens of architectural beauty, and 
not a few present an ecclesiastical exterior of surpassing ele- 
gance and grandeur ; while the interior fittings display affluence 
and luxury to such an extent that the poor have hardly a place 
within them where they can feel at ease. The means placed at 
the disposal of these religious corporations, so far as material 
wealth is concerned, if properly administered, are more than 
ample to meet all the spiritual needs of the people ; but the 
fact is, the Churches are, from extravagant management 
embarrassed by debt, while the great majority of them 
are only partially filled with occupants, and not a few 



1 2 IN TROD UCTION. 

are almost, if not altogether deserted. Where then 
shall we find the cause for this condition of things as 
thus truthfully described ? And ceteris paribus, a similar 
condition of partial, if not complete failure, will be found every- 
where. Has the truth of God, or the love and light of our 
blessed Lord grown dim that His Gospel should fail, and that 
its power to evangelize the world should prove abortive ? Not 
so ! God's truth in the world was never brighter nor more reso- 
nant of His glory, of His power and of His love, than it is to- 
day, for the story of the Cross is interpreted in a clearer, purer 
and with a more rational intelligence than ever before. The 
failure of Protestant orthodoxy is no more a failure of the 
Gospel of Christ in the year 1880, than the failure of Romish 
orthodoxy was a failure of that same blessed Gospel in the days 
of Henry the VIII., or Edward the VI. Our Divine Saviour's 
love and life will march triumphantly over the debris of all 
apostate churches, whether Protestant or Romish ; for God is 
no more a respecter of Churches than He is of persons, merely 
because they sit in Moses' seat. The Lamb of God was not 
slain to save ecclesiastical organizations. He grants no spiritual 
monopolies in order that His agents may plunder the people ! 
What then becomes of the Church of Christ? This question 
can only be answered when you get a reply to another, and that 
other is : What is the Church of Christ ? What is it now ? What 
will it finally become ? Now it is composed of all who are born 
into the life and love of our Divine Redeemer, and it will be com- 
pleted when all He has ever loved have been born into His life 
and love ! ! Multitudes who love the Lord to-day, and like Nico- 
demus, who went to him by night, are also persecuted as he was, 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

by their own little sect, for being faithful to Christ. Not a few 
are cast out, and more than a few refuse to come in, because they 
do not see the life of the Cross in the professing Church, — 
they see more of the spirit of self and the world, of human 
dogmatism and what I would call creed-faith, than the 
spirit and life of the gentle and meek Saviour. The re- 
ligious sects to-day are for the most part spiritually dead, 
and however materially prosperous they may be, this epi- 
taph might be truthfully written on their church doors : — 
Starved to death by Protestant Orthodoxy ; or this :— After a 
lingering illness this Church was killed by pew-rents. 

How much longer will the churches continue to resist 
the plain injunctions of our Divine Lord ? After cast- 
ing out and scourging all who profaned God's House 
by traffic, He thus addressed the orthodox priests and 
pastors of his church : — " My house shall be called an house 
of prayer for all nations, [marginal reading] but ye have made 
it a den of thieves. And the scribes and chief priests heard it, 
and sought how they might destroy Him : for they feared Him, 
because all the people was astonished at His doctrine." Mark 
xi. 17, 18. It is evident from this, as well as from many 
other passages of the Gospels that Jesus was in bitter 
antagonism with the spurious Orthodoxy of His day, and 
that His denunciations of its falsehood and corruption brought 
upon Him the hatred and the malice of the various Sectaries 01 
the Jewish Church. After His human form was withdrawn 
from the earth, and His excarnation completed, He again de- 
scends upon his infant church in " cloven tongues, like as of 
fire," "and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of 
them that believed were of one heart and of one soul : neither 
said any of them that ought of the things that he possessed 
was his own ; but they had all things common." This Divine 
Communism was a prophecy and a foregleaming of what Chris- 
tianity should be, and one day yet in the future will become. 
But what a falling off is here ! Alas ! how soon selfishness 
and greed and love of getting, brought in their train untold 
miseries. Then came ambition with its lordship, envy with its 
malice, hatred with its murder — divisions, contentions, oppress- 
ions, and that hard and bitterest of all conflicts, the tyranny of 
the rich over the poor — the conflict of capital with labor, money 
versus toil ; but Jesus always on the side of labor, toil, poverty ! ! 
Read how His Servant James deals with pew-rents ! and let 
the churches learn that a front seat cannot be bought in God's 
House with money — " For if there come into your assembly 
a man with a gold ring, and goodly apparel, and there come 
in also a poor man in vile raiment ; and ye have respect to him 
that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, sit thou here 
in a good place ; and say to the poor, stand thou there, or sit 
here under my footstool. Are ye not then partial in your- 
selves, and are become judges of evil thoughts ? * * Ye 
have despised the poor." James ii. 3, 6. In proportion to the 
truth of docjrines, and the sincerity with which they are held, 
will flow a correspondingly pure life ; but if false or held in 
unrighteousness, that is unjustly, not sincerely, the outflowing 
life will be a counterfeit. 

On the same Sunday to which reference has been made 
namely, the second of the present month in the city of Brooklyn 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 5 

called the City of Churches, the pastor of its largest as well as 
its leading Methodist church, stated that if Jesusof Nazareth, as 
the poor and despised carpenter, were to come and preach in 
that city as He did in Judea, the smallest church would afford 
ample accommodation for all who would listen to his ministry. 
This eloquent pastor then stated that there were in the city of 
Brooklyn 300,000 people who did not attend any place of wor- 
ship. From this testimony it is evident that Brooklyn 
is not behind New York in its indifference to the claims of 
modern Christianity as represented by Protestant orthodoxy. 
In short it is a painful but a palpable fact that the great 
masses of the people repudiate pseudo-orthodox Chris- 
tianity as represented by Protestant sectarianism. It is 
equally true that a very large majority of those who regu- 
larly attend and support public worship do not believe their 
puritan creeds, and are restive and impatient if their ministers 
even in a very mild form presume to preach or teach dogmatic 
theology, while the narrow few who desire this teaching and 
who are fast dying off, suspect their pastors of being disloyal 
to their iron-bound confessions of faith. It is safe to affirm 
that it would be difficult to find any congregation of note that 
would now tolerate the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, or 
Cotton Mather, or Michael Wigglesworth, the celebrated author 
of " The Day of Doom." The Puritan preachers have passed 
away and their theology has died with their sincere and enthu 
siastic devotion, and now lies mouldering in these creeds which 
hang round the necks of their successors in the ministry, holding 
them in a bondage from which they are continually but vainly 
attempting to escape. This bondage has been produced by a 



1 6 INTRODUCTION. 

moral revolution in the religious th ought of the masses of the peo- 
ple, and an unhallowed compromise which still retains these 
unintelligible and contradictory formulas of doctrinal beliefs. 

" Theological Evolution " has been at work showing 
that God's truth grows and can never be confined within the 
limits of the religious thought of any one age. Our Puritan 
ancestors manufactured confessions of faith which suited their 
day and generation, but which are utterly unfitted for a more 
advanced condition of religious progress. Their nominal re- 
tention in the constitutions of our Protestant organizations has 
weakened our sense of obligation to candor and honesty, and 
exercised a demoralizing influence upon the religious con- 
science generally. Sectarianism is the root ; corporate selfish- 
ness is the tree — dogmatic formulas and ecclesiastical corrup- 
tion are the bitter fruit. One of the foremost men of the age, 
when asked his reason for not joining any of the Protestant 
orthodox sects, replied: "I have never united myself to 
any church, because I have found a difficulty in giv- 
ing my assent, without mental reservation, to the long 
complicated statements of Christian doctrine which char- 
acterize their articles of belief and confessions of faith." 
Experience has demonstrated that the most transcendental 
and extravagant belief in machine-made confessions of faith, 
connected with long standing church membership, can be 
allied with sensuality of disposition and absolute criminalty of 
character, while on the other hand purity and high principle 
often animate the minds of those who from their very integrity 
of character are unable to attach themselves by membership 
to any Christian communion. 



INTRODUCTION. 1 7 

Christianity is not a creed, for had it been so Christ would 
have given us one, but Christianity is a life, hence He said " be- 
lieve in me," " I am the Life !" Character constitutes 
life. " Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a re- 
proach to any people." We need to-day to accomplish 
two great achievements by which the people, with God's 
help, will work out their own salvation — politically, a moral 
revolution, and religiously a spiritual reformation. These will 
emancipate us from the deluge of selfishness and corruption 
which floods the state and the churches. It is with the latter 
that this book has to do, and I am sanguine of its future for it 
unfolds a system of theology more scriptural, because more ra- 
tional than that which has come down to us in a modified form 
from the dark ages. That theology which was true to the Puri- 
tans and which in the past served its purpose because the great 
Puritan mind was true to it, has become, because of higher 
education and enlarged knowledge, false to us of to-day. 
I know it is the fashion with Puritanical Orthodoxy to under- 
value and even ridicule this enlightened progress which is 
one of the marked characteristics of the age ; and oftentimes 
both the pulpit and the religious press will describe this advanc- 
ing culture as the spirit of infidelity and the presumption of 
profane skepticism, dismissing the subject by pounding it with 
a few inapt and palpably irrelevant texts from the Bible, such 
as " The World by Wisdom Knew not God, etc.," " The Foolish- 
ness of Preaching, "and so forth. But human thought continues to 
press forward, leading on to fresh discoveries and higher altitudes 
of material and moral light, while the preacher and the clerical 
editor continue the process of pounding to empty pews and an 



18 INTRODUCTION, 

exceedingly limited and circumscribed number of readers. 
Meantime the current facts of continuous history demonstrate 
the truth of this inevitable progress, proving the sleepless prin- 
ciple of evolution as Herbert Spencer has well shown to be sub- 
jective as well as objective — that is, inward as well as out- 
ward, mental as well as material. 

Probably in its results the greatest event of this cen- 
tury will be the publication this year of a revised edition 
of the New Testament. Ten years ago this stupendous, 
and in its consequences, incalculably valuable enterprise of re- 
translating King James's Version of the Holy Scriptures was in- 
augurated under the direction and auspices of the Episcopal 
Convocation of Canterbury. The world will, before the year 
closes, receive the first instalment of this much needed under- 
taking. From the first the religious press looked with suspicion 
upon what some designated a daring profanation,while the secular 
press, always truer to the great cause of human progress, hailed 
the movement with marked favor. A very pungent article on 
the subject appeared in the columns of the New York Sun 
of the 1 8th of this month from which I quote the following 
passage, as showing the increased advantages possessed by the 
modern translators over those of 1611 : 

" The seven leading Bible societies of the world have already 
circulated over 125,000,000 Bibles, and here will be' put forth 
a new Bible which will cast doubt on the accuracy of all that 
vast supply of the Scriptures which has been scattered as the 
unalterable Word of God. 

Such arguments as these will undoubtedly be used. Yet the 
new revision is rapidly proceeding to completion, and if it is 
faithful to the originals, and honestly made with all the new 
light modern philology and historical investigation have thrown 
on the sacred texts, its variations from the rendering of our 
existing version must be many and important. It must omit 



IN TROD UCTION. 1 9 

as utterly spurious passages which are held in loving veneration, 
and vindicate others about whose authenticity there is a strong 
and reasonable doubt. For not only has our knowledge of the 
original tongues in which the Scriptures were written greatly 
increased since the beginning of the seventeenth century, but 
we have also purer texts, and a flood of light has been poured 
during that time on the ancient manuscripts." 

I am under a deep conviction that this new version of the 
Holy Scriptures will be a potent factor in the process of 
sweeping away false theories and worn-out theologies. I 
am also satisfied that the changes to be made will help forward 
the theological doctrines which are outlined and advocated 
in this little volume, as they are based upon an intimate knowl- 
edge of the original languages, and in short that this new 
translation of the Bible is in itself an evidence of the truth of 
these dissertations, and of the fact of " Theological Evolution.' 

For it is the Bible and the Bible alone that is destined to 
break down and disintegrate those narrow theological con- 
ceptions which present so mean and haggard a view of the 
Creator and Father of all. I give a single illustration of this : 

"The confession of faith" of "the Presbyterian Church in 
the United States of America" teaches, and the ministers of 
this church profess to believe that — 

" By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, 
some men and angels are predestined to everlasting life, and 
others fore-ordained to everlasting death. These angels and 
men thus predestined and fore-ordained, are particularly and 
uncha7igeably designed ; and their number is so certain and 
definite that it cannot be either increased or di7ninished" 

These articles, so repulsive and cruel, are said to be 
based on certain texts in the Bible. No wonder, there- 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

fore, when this sacred book is so slandered, and God, 
who is love, is so caricatured, that skepticism should 
prevail, and more than half a million of people in the 
cities of New York and Brooklyn should decline going to any- 
place of worship ; — such theology in the present day degrades 
man and dishonors God. If redemption and salvation be 
thus confined even in Christendom to the favored few, 
is it possible that enlightened men outside the Christian 
pale could love or trust so arbitrary and sanguinary a God ? 
Could any human tyrant inflict greater injustice or cruelty 
than is here ascribed to that loving and all gracious Father 
" who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the 
knowledge of the truth ?" I Tim. ii. 4. But the fact 
is that the Christian Scriptures even at this late day, 
with all that Bible societies have been doing, are not in 
the possession of more than one-fifth of the human race. Per- 
haps it is a promising feature of the present, and for the future, 
that four-fifths of our race know nothing about these sacred 
writings. And before they can be made available for any really 
universal acceptance at the hands of mankind they must be res- 
cued from even the suspicion that they teach any such theories 
of God and His character as are contained in the doctrinal 
teaching of Puritan theology. 

When Christendom shall grow out of its narrow sec- 
tarian spirit and embrace a theology which shall unite 
truth and life together — when it shall possess not only a 
pure and true Bible but be itself in its character a liv- 
ing epistle of its Bible's truths, then, and not till then, will the 
nations of the earth accept at the hands of Christendom that 



D UCTION. 21 

holy volume which, when rationally interpreted and sincerely 
obeyed, brings with it not only individual but national salva- 
tion. Race prejudi:es and prenatal disabilities will disperse and 
vanish before this glorious Book when it comes backed up with 
that purity of character and self-sacrificing disposition which 
animated the mind and life of the crucified Nazarene. Our 
vain and conceited attempts and our lavish expenditure of 
treasure to convert the heathen, will be a fruitless and utter 
waste, while with fire, sword, and soldiery equipped with and 
drilled in the use of an artillery before unequalled in its power 
to slaughter, we go forth first to plunder, then to civilize. 
Whole races are not to be converted by our advent amongst 
them with the Bible in one hand, and that the sinister one, 
while the other comes laden with bayonets, bombshells and 
taxes. For seven years I was the Secretary of the oldest Bible So- 
ciety in the world, in the city of London, and during that time I 
circulated more Bibles than all the ministers of this city ever han- 
dled. During the Crimean War and the Indian rebellion, I have, 
in one day, given away one by one with my own hands, to British 
soldiers, as many as six hundred Bibles. The details of these 
distributions are published by " the Naval and Military Bible 
Society," in my book named "The Word and the Sword." I am 
familiar with the labors of Bible Societies all over the world, 
and I am amazed that these institutions have not learned the 
lessons which they have taught me— namely, the fruitless char- 
acter of their foreign work ! The truth is, before Christendom 
can convert the world, it must itself be converted ! The 
Bible seals its condemnation and foreshadows its future fail- 
ures in these words ; " By their fruits ye shall know them." 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

Its theology has almost slaughtered brotherly love and emas- 
culated our holy religion of the common and universal Father- 
hood of God. It has tried to falsify and kill the Scriptures, 
and one great evidence of the Bible's Divine Inspiration consists 
in the fact that it has failed to do this. This theology of 
the past — which is always changing because it is defect- 
ive—is man's interpretation ot God's truth, which being 
perfect never changes. Hence theology, which is both an 
evolution and a growth, must continually experience modifica- 
tions and new adjustments in the direction of progress, while 
the truth of our Divine Saviour will ever remain the same, pro- 
claiming in clearer and more penetrating tones, the power of 
His love as the Creator, father and sanctifier of all. 

I have a final word to say in writing this introduction. 
It has been my uniform habit during a ministry now 
covering nearly thirty years, never to stand on the fence 
concerning the truth of the Gospel ; hence, I cannot 
leave my readers in doubt as to the sort of endorse- 
ment which I give to the doctrinal teaching of this vol- 
ume. I believe that it contains the highest, the clearest, and 
the most harmonious unfoldment of Scriptural and Christian 
truth which I have ever read. . 

Those of my readers who, in New York City, attended 
my ministry will readily recognize the CDnformity of 
my views with the writer and compiler of these dis- 
sertations, especially on such subjects as moral evil, the Trin- 
ity, the Atonement, the Inspiration of Holy Scripture and the 
Incarnation of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; and 
it is a pleasing re.niniscence that he was one of my occasional 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

hearers when I treated on these subjects. It is probably owing 
to this fact that he has kindly accorded to me both the privi- 
lege and duty of writing this introduction and giving a gen- 
eral literary superintendence to the publication of this vol- 
ume designated "Theological Evolution." Under 
this title these Dissertations present a harmonious unfoldment 
of a theology which coincides with a rational exegesis of the 
Holy Scriptures, while sustaining and vindicating their di- 
vinely constructed and supernatural character, showing how 
the first sweet bud of the graceful and majestic Rose of Sharon 
shed its penetrating fragrance on the history of our race, and 
how, out of the beautiful allegory of Eden's Gaiden, the per- 
fume of Revelation's Inspiration spread. 

Back, back, far back ! before writing was known, or 
even symbol that could distinguish sound was discovered, 
on wings of traditional fame and glory, "came God 
Almighty's primeval promise, "The seed of the woman 
shall bruise the serpent's head." Then was born that 
sweet Child of Inspiration destined to slay the giant of 
ignorance and the vampire of sin. How that sweet sentence 
of universal love and promise grew and became not merely a 
book, but a congeries of books instructing the world 
and enlightening all succeeding ages is a question, the 
solution of which can only be found in the life and 
character of the Holy Nazarene. Thus the Almighty Father, 
through his written Revelation — while yet unwritten, wrapped 
in the swaddling clothes of unborn memories, like a spiritual 
foetus in the womb of history, and lying in the cradle of tradi- 
tion — teaches not only the ages and generations which are not, 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

but also those which are yet unborn, how He works ; how 
every hour brings with it its divine evolution or unfoldment, 
until, in the fullness of time, the divine attributes are presented 
in a humanity perfected, containing " all the fullness of the God- 
head bodily," and finally glorified, so that " death is swallowed 
up in victory," and in the man Christ Jesus all that there is of 
God and man are irrevocably and inseparably united. 

God help us to study this imperishable volume — the 
Divinely Inspired Word of the living and true God — around 
which are centred the springs of the world's greatness, and 
separated from which it would become lost in the measureless 
and dreary deserts of human depravity — that we ourselves may 
be able to live the life of Christ under the divine illumination of 
His love, and become emancipated from that sectarian bigotry 
which is as the shifting sand or the baseless fabric of a dream. 

Charles P. McCarthy. 
Hopkinson Avenue and McDonough St., 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 

February 28th, 1880. 



THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, 



In a series of dissertations on the cardinal doctrines of Chris- 
tianity it seems eminently proper to begin by speaking of the Holy 
Scriptures. God's Holy Word is the foundation upon which the 
Church builds all its teachings, and the foundation must be laid 
before we can build anything upon it. That Holy Word is the 
foundation of all truth. It tells of God Himself and of his deal- 
ings with men. It sets before us Jesus Christ the Ever Blessed 
Son of God, and points out the way of salvation : It teaches us 
what we are to believe and what we are to do : It is the very voice 
of God speaking to us from heaven. If, then, we be going to 
speak of the things taught us in this precious book, it is surely 
right to begin by speaking of the book itself. 

The Bible is, in the truest sense, a revelation of the mind of 
God, for " holy men of old spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost," but it is a revelation of the Divine mind, not simply 
as expressed in the words of human language, but as clothed in 
the forms of human thought. Revelation has therefore two sides, 
a Divine and a human. Divine in its essence, human in its form, 
the revealed like the incarnate Word, is Divinity clothed with 



26 • THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

humanity. On its Divine side it is absolute truth, on its human 
side it is relative truth. The absolute truth of Scripture is like its 
Divine author, eternal, unchangeable, universal ; its relative truth 
like its human writers, is temporal, variable, local. The absolute 
truth of scripture is not, therefore, that which appears in its cos- 
mogony, its science, its history, or even its ecclesiastical laws and 
institutions. These are forms of human thought which belong to 
the periods in which the scripture was written, and are but the 
human vesture in which Divine truth clothed itself, when it de- 
scended from God to the abodes of men. The Old and the New 
Testaments are striking examples of this. In descending into the 
Hebrew mind, Revelation clothed itself with the forms of Hebrew 
thought. Much of it, for this reason, consists of the history of that 
peculiar people, and not a little of its teaching is accommodated 
to their particular state of mental development and imperfect 
spiritual discernment. The Hebrew Scriptures contain no direct 
revelation of the immortality of the soul, and speak of none but 
temporal rewards and punishments ; other laws besides that of 
divorce were given them " for the hardness of their hearts," and 
their whole system of sacrificial worship was the adaptation of an 
existing ritual to their carnal state. 

The New Testament is addressed to a higher condition of mind. 
Life and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel. God as 
a spirit is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. The law of 
ordinances is abolished, -and the moral law is raised to a higher 
standard. If the state of mankind, at the time it was revealed, 
had been less degraded, the letter of the Scripture would doubt- 
less have been a more perfect image of its spirit. It would have 
contained no indications of an angry God ; no command to 
slaughter nations, and seize on their heritage ; no sanction of con- 



THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 27 

cubinage or plurality of wives ; no worship of God by offering 
Him the blood of slain beasts. We must, however, carefully 
guard against supposing these to be blemishes, or even imper- 
fections, in the Bible. On the contrar)% they are justly to be 
regarded as evidences of the perfection of Scripture, as a wise 
means to a beneficent end. A form of revelation more perfect in 
itself, expressed more in accordance with absolute truth, would 
have been less suited, or rather would have been entirely unsuited, 
to the imperfect nature of man. The Holy Word of God bears 
the image of the earthly in order that by coming nearer to man in 
his earthly state, it may raise him to the image of the Divine and 
to the state of the heavenly. 

In studying this great Book, we must remember that its dis- 
closures of Divine truth are made in accordance with the laws and 
limitations of our intellectual being, and its modes of representa- 
tion vary according to the different degrees of culture in those to 
whom they are addressed. Revelation cannot, at all events does 
not, communicate truth to the human mind faster than the mind 
is able to receive it. The Bible is a large book, because it com- 
prises instruction for all people and all conditions of people, in all 
ages. But large as it is, it would have to be many times larger 
had it been designed to teach us all that we learn in this life. 
This you know the Bible does not for a moment affect to do. If 
we think that the Bible ought to teach us history, chemistry or 
astronomy, let us remember that heaven will not be closed to us, 
should we remain ever so ignorant of such secular knowledge to 
our dying day, and that nobody will be questioned on any such 
subject at his last account. But does the Bible contain no history? 
Beyond doubt it does, but history not in the ordinary but a 
restricted sense. Its history was written to subserve and illus- 



28 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

trate its lessons. It would be at variance with acknowledged 
principles, and, therefore, unreasonable to find a history of the 
world in a Scripture history. 

" All Scripture," we are told, "is given by inspiration of God, 
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
struction in righteousness." It thus appears for such practical 
ends alone its facts have been selected. How much are we told 
about Adam and Eve ? Barely that they were the first of our 
race, and that they sinned. How much of Noah ? Barely that he 
and his family were saved when the rest of the descendants of Adam 
atid Eve were destroyed by a flood, " whereby the world that then 
was" — as St. Peter expresses it — "being overflowed with water, 
perished," but whereby few persons, that is, eight souls were saved. 
" The like figtire tvherennto baptism doth also now save us." Show 
ing after all that it is to the typical character of the deluge, rather 
than to the event itself, that the Bible points. 

The Bible commences with the "first Adam," but it only men- 
tions him to point away from him to the " second Adam." To the 
second Adam it had reached all through, and with the second 
Adam it ends. No matter where or how our race began, it will be 
well if we end in Him. 

Whether our earth were formed six thousand years back or six 
millions, and whether it survive us or not, is alike indifferent, so 
that the purpose for which man was placed on it, be subserved — 
so that it prepares man for heaven. Difficulties that encounter us 
in every walk of life, must not be supposed to be absent from 
the Bible. Is it not the height of assurance and folly, to suppose 
that we can by mere knowledge of the ancient languages, and of 
the rules of grammar ever so profound, attain to what was in the 
mind of its Divine Author, whose purposes were veiled ^and 



THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 29 

shrouded in mystery from those who penned it, and still only 
known so far as they have been interpreted by the event, or by 
some further commentary supplied by Himself? How can we 
hope to fathom what God meant, if we confine ourselves to the 
rules employed by us for ascertaining what man means ? Our 
view of the passage may be contradicted by facts, but then it 
is our view, not the passage, which is proven false. If there be 
one thing more than another which the Bible does, it points for- 
ward. It discloses no more to us of the past than is absolutely 
necessary to enable us to realize the present, and press forward 
to the future. The crucial question for us is, to what extent God 
has promised to unfold this meaning, or has actually done so. 
" The natural man," says the Apostle, " receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he 
know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Howbeit, 
when He, the Spirit of Truth is come, He will guide you into all 
truth." I cannot recall any passage, where more is promised 
either to the individual or to the Church, than the last quoted. 
But according to it, we are left to infer that there may be much 
in the Bible, of which the full meaning is as yet withheld, for 
which we must be content to wait in faith. 

Most, if not all, of the popular difficulties with which Scripture 
has been credited in our own times, are purely fictitious — in other 
words, have been created by man ; bv our forefathers or by our- 
selves. It is not Scripture, but their or our interpretation of 
Scripture that is in fault. The claims of Scripture have been 
most seriously compromised in our days, by the glosses that have 
been put upon the Bible. 

The difficulties of Biblical interpretation come from ourselves, 
from our bad logic, from our inherent egotism, from exaggerated 



30 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

notions of our own importance in various ways, many more than 
we perhaps ever realized. The Bible, for instance, tells us how 
the earth which we inhabit, was formed for our first parents — we 
directly conclude, without any authority, that it could not have 
existed till then, or served any previous purpose. Scripture is 
reserved on both points. We will not hear of its silence. We 
insist it shall speak, we put our own meaning on it. Scripture 
tells us positive^', that Adam and Eve were the first of our race, 
we directly conclude that there never was any race of beings like 
ourselves, of other origin. This again, is our gloss upon Scrip- 
ture. Science is at liberty to prove if it can, that some nations 
now existing, have descended from pre-Adamic tribes, and to 
carry those tribes back to the pliocene epoch, or to suppose that 
some pre-Adamic tribes have become extinct. It need not dis- 
turb our confidence in the credibility of the Mosaic history, which, 
it is enough for us to know, is the commencement of a family tree, 
one of whose branches was Israel, one of whose children was 
Jesus. Almost all our interpretations of the first ten chapters of 
Genesis are derived from times when everybody piously believed 
our earth to be the centre of all things, and everything in the 
universe to have been created for the sake of our earth. Galileo t 
was condemned for teaching that the earth moved, and this theory 
was pronounced as being contrary to Scripture. Galileo modestly 
pleaded that Scripture was never intended to teach us astronomy. 
In order to substantiate their charges of heresy, the would-be 
defenders of the faith first assumed the teaching of Scripture 
to be that the sun moved, and then contended that it was a 
physical impossibility that the earth should move too. Impotent 
assumption ! Absurd inference ! Few infidels ever discred-' 
ited scripture more than these Roman Inquisitors. The grand- 



THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 31 

est of all the recorded scenes in the Old Testament — " Sun, 
stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of 
Ajalon," became the sceptic's lever from that time forth, not at all 
for what it really means, but because of their gloss. 

There are various other glosses upon Scripture, that from hav- 
ing become traditional, are clung to still, in spite of their obvious 
incompatibility with the spirit of modern thought and progress, 
which it is my purpose to point out to you in these dissertations. 
Whenever these glosses are abandoned, it is scripture, not infi- 
delity, that will be the gainer. We cannot surely require that 
Scripture shall continue to be read by the feeble lights of a past 
age, nor can we be justly surprised that modern discoveries 
should have made such havoc with the glosses inherited from it. 

Just as there is a progressive system in any other department 
of knowledge, in nature and in mind, by which we can ascend 
from simplest facts to their complex connections, and from these 
connections to generalizations, which we call laws, so there is a 
progressive system in the Bible. Religious knowledge must be 
progressive. We ought to know more than our fathers, the mod- 
erns more than the ancients. And this does not necessitate the 
making of a new revelation. A book written on geology a quarter 
of a century ago, is absolutely worthless now, except as a mile- 
stone far behind, to show the progress of later investigations. So 
of chemistry, botany, astronomy. Yet these do not necessitate the 
idea of fresh creations. The atoms, the affinities, the plants, the 
stones, the rocks, are the same that they have been for thousands 
of years ; but our acquirements in the knowledge of all these are 
perpetually enlarging. The records of God's mind in the Bible 
need no appendix or addition, yet the workers in this field will 
expand the area of religious knowledge, as long as the Bible and 



32 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

the human mind co-exist in the universe, just as astronomy will 
extend its domain, so long as the mind of man co-exists with 
God's multitudinous stars. 

The apparent conflict between religion and science is due 
greatly to a fundamentally wrong idea of Holy Scripture. Mod- 
ern sectists seem to forget that " The letter killeth, but the spirit 
giveth life." They forgot that the Lord spake all things in para- 
bles — " and without a parable spake He not." And if He always 
spoke in parables when He tabernacled in the flesh, can we sup- 
pose Him to have spoken in any other way, when He spoke 
through other mediums— through Patriarchs, Prophets and Apos- 
tles ? There is much of truth in the letter, but the richest gems, 
its exhaustless stores of wealth, lie deep within. "Our Lord 
Jesus Christ," says S. Austin; "intended that these miracles 
which He wrought on the bodies of men, should also be under- 
derstood spiritually." " The law of God," says S. Ignatius, " is 
spiritual, and they have not the true law who do not take it spirit- 
ually." "Whatsoever," says St. Jerome, "is promised to the 
Israelites carnally, we show will at one time or another, be ful- 
filled in us spiritually. Pamphilius says : " Though these 
things" in the four Evangelists, " have a spiritual meaning, yet 
the truth of the history being first established, the spiritual sense 
is to be taken over and above." 

Such is the theory in regard to the Holy Scriptures* taught by all 
the most learned and illustrious of the Christian Fathers — a line 
of interpretation which they adopted, as a learned English author 
says, "by a kind of sacred instinct." I have already warned you 
against glossing upon Scripture ; let me warn you quite as strongly 
against distorting facts. By glossing Scripture, I mean not merely 
putting an interpretation upon Scripture which misrepresents it, 



THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 33 

but maintaining that this and no other can be its meaning. And 
by distorting facts, I mean not only stating them in a confused and 
imperfect manner — for this is hard enough to avoid doing some- 
times with the best intentions — but mis-stating them, to make them 
appear favorable to some exaggerated view or whim of our own. 
It is thus sect arises. One school of opinion, one tide of religious 
movement gains the mastery; it sweeps all other sides of the truth 
aside ; it forms a new centre, and around it these gather the preju- 
dices, the interests, the love and hate, and the passionate worship 
of men. It may be a weighty truth or a living movement in the 
beginning, but it becomes false when it is pushed out of its place. 
And it unfortunately results that one error begets another equally 
extreme in a counter-direction. Let us turn to the Roman Com- 
munion as a case in point, from which Ave can learn a lesson. 
Wearing the antique splendors of the church, it is a colossal sect 
which for ages has been elaborating a dogmatic system composed 
of scholastic sophistries, and its sectarian spirit reached its result 
in the fatal logic which forced it to the dogma of infallibility, and 
left it the foe of thought and freedom for ever. And yet it is only 
an imperial example of the vice always in the Christian body — 
for what is its despotic sacerdotalism, from the usurpations of 
which one European government after another has recoiled, but a 
fanatical exaggeration of that conservative respect for ecclesiasti- 
cal order and authority taught by Holy Scripture. 

We must thus again fairly judge the character of Protestantism. 
The reaction of spiritual freedom against despotism loosened the 
common bond ; one said, I am of Luther ; and another, I am of 
Calvin ; and soon the great body crystallized about rival creeds. 
Faith in Christ became faith in a formula of justification, and the 
supremacy of God's Word, the tyranny of theological systems. It 



34 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

was against a Romish error of a grace shut up in priestly sacraments 
that Calvin declared, as Paul did, the free gift of God ; but his 
scholastic mind changed the truth of the Christian calling into an 
abstract theory, and so a great sect grew up of an elect few who, 
instead of the simple faith of Christ, must be indoctrinated into 
most subtle logic. 

And thus the sectarian process went on. Another party thought 
infant baptism inconsistent with a church of the regenerate, and a 
new close communion followed. The Unitarian refused the dog- 
matic view of the Trinity, and his religion became a cold negation 
instead of a faith in the living Son of God. Each definition begat 
a division, each division a new communion. Every truth in the 
whole range of knowledge, man's or God's, has its own intrinsic 
value, which comes to it from its connection with the entire uni- 
versal system of truth, and one great trouble with Christian stu- 
dents is, that they devote themselves to some one truth, which is 
certainly truth, but which they study segregated from its connec- 
tions ; some doctrine, some sacrament, some principle true in 
itself, but only part of the truth, is taken as the paramount centre 
of the whole Christian system. We have one Bible, but each turns 
it into a book of proof-texts for the special theology of the sect ; 
and thus the manifold grace of God, the generous life which by 
His plan should work in the Church, as He creates the oak or 
the palm, the rose or the wild flower, is dwarfed by the sectary 
into a garden walled around. 

The purport of revelation is to be gathered from the general 
scope Df the Scriptures, and not by the study of isolated texts. 
We commonly fortify our creeds and confessions of faith with an 
array of what are called " proof texts." This may be expedient, 
but it is a mode of proceeding that may be perverted to the great- 



THE HOT Y SCRIP T URE S. 35 

est error. By separating single passages of Scripture from their 
connection, and by the exercise of some ingenuity in selecting, 
arranging and mutilating these texts, the most marvellous variety 
of theological systems has been constructed out of the materials 
of the Bible. And as a specimen of the way this much abused 
book is sometimes treated in the pulpit, you will hear a single 
passage quoted from the words of Eliphaz the Temanite, to confirm 
some favorite doctrine ; and on the next Sunday, another from the 
lips of Job, to prove something else, entirely ignoring the fact 
that Eliphaz and Job are in controversy, and that each is trying 
to rebut the assertions of the other. Now, if there be any one 
thing which distinguishes the Bible from other works, it is 
the perfect freedom with which it utters whatever truth seems 
to be called for, without the slightest regard to its verbal 
consistency with any other truths recorded in its pages. In 
one place it is said God repented that He had made man ; 
in another, that He cannot repent ; the sins of the father are 
declared to be visited upon the children, and again it is said that 
they are not. Jesus says, " I and my Father are one," and almost 
in the same breath He adds, " My Father is greater than I." St. 
Paul affirms that we are justified by faith without works, and cites 
the case of Abraham in illustration of the doctrine ; St. Jarnes 
just as emphatically says, that by works a man is justified, and 
not by faith only, and also refers to Abraham in proof of his posi- 
tion. And yet, properly interpreted and regarded in their legiti- 
mate connection, there is no real inconsistency in any of these 
statements. 

It is thus that the Scriptures present to us the full complement 
of truth ; for, in theology as in all other sciences, completeness is 
attained through apparent contrariety. Even in mathematics, the 



36 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 

most rigid of all sciences, there are theorems which seem to con- 
flict ; and the whole kingdom of nature is full of discordant 
harmonies. There is just as much a science of super-natuie as 
there is a science of nature, but it is as absurd to complain that the 
Bible was not written scientifically in an orderly body of dogmatic 
theology, as to complain that the book of nature was not written 
scientificall)'. No ! let God be praised that He has flung the 
beauties of nature all about, giving man's mind the capability of 
educing the scientific system from the apparently promiscuous 
prodigality of creation. Just so God has made the Bible ; history 
and prophecy, and song and drama and letter. There is a string 
of truth on which they are strung, a principle moving through 
them all. It is our business to discover that principle, and not to 
content ourselves with being amused at the phenomena of indi 
vidual truths, nor to destroy our intellectual symmetry and equi- 
poise by incessant devotion to a truth separated from all its con- 
nections. 

The moral of all I have said is plain. We should have faith in 
Scripture ; but have no such faith in any meanings put upon it, 
which God has not inspired. It is by the glosses which have been 
put upon Scripture that the claims of Scripture have been mostly 
shaken in our own days. We might as well try to convert the 
budding into the full blown rose with our fingers, as to force 
Scripture open with our conjectures when its meaning is sealed. 
Of private duties it speaks far too plainly for most of us. , Because 
there are difficulties in the Bible we must not let ourselves be 
seduced into closing our hearts to all those ennobling lessons 
there, which "he that runneth may read." 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 



To speak of God, or even to think of Him, is, in one sense, to 
raise a difficulty, for in so doing we are always seeking to repre- 
sent the infinite by the finite: that is, by terms whose significance 
is relative only, and many people are so possessed with the dark- 
ness and obscurity of the subject that they avoid all inquiries of 
this nature as utterly despairing of ever attaining to any tolerable 
notion of it, and yet faith pre-supposes a competent degree of 
knowledge, else a man may be saved by a faith in — he knows 
not what. 

St. Augustine tritely says: "'That God exists more truly than He 
can be thought of, and that He can be thought of more truly than 
He can be spoken of." The nations of antiquity tried to reduce 
God to some external likeness of men. Do not despise them. 
They are buried away and linger only in the names of the stars, 
or in the names by which we distinguish the da) r s of the week, and 
they have given way to a system which modern theclogy has in ven- 
ted — essence, substance, begotten, unbegotten, proceeding, person, 
mode, subsistence, perichorisis, circumincession, etc. — in all of 
which respects God is spoken of as infinite and eternal. But when 
we come to analyze the ideas these terms suggest in the hope of at- 



38 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OE GOD. 

taining to an intelligent conception of them, we are on every side 
involved in inextricable confusion and contradiction, no matter 
in what point of view we regard them. 

Nothing so perplexes the mind of an ordinary layman as the 
astounding and exclusive familiarity which the clergy and writers 
on dogmatic theology profess with reference to the nature and 
character of God and His dealings with mankind. They under- 
take to clear your poor head of all doubts and difficulties. 
They insist upon your adopting their -arguments, which, to you, 
seem no arguments at all, and accepting their explanations, 
which explain nothing. What you want is a foundation. They 
can dispense with that. They can build in the air. So at one 
time we are told confidently about an arrangement between the 
Father and the Son, whereby a certain price was to be paid for the 
sin of mankind, and mankind rescued from the devil, or from the 
Heavenly Father, or from sin, or from an offended law. A forensic 
transaction of some kind has taken place between the Father 
and the Son. The crucifixion of Christ has satisfied the wrath of 
God against sin, or has satisfied the majesty of offended law. It 
is sometimes difficult to understand what has been satisfied, nor 
is it easy for an average mind to perceive how, if it be sin against 
the law to pardon the guilty, it should be no sin against the law 
to inflict arbitrary suffering on the innocent. It has been thought 
by some that to add such an infliction to the remission of a penalty 
is to double the transgression against the majesty of offended 
law, not to cancel it. But such objections do not much trouble 
professional theologians, who reply that God's ways are not our 
ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. 

Again we are told of the tender and infinite love of God. In- 
deed how loving are his ways ! He appears according to some to 



THE NA TURE AND A T TRIBUTES OF GOD. 39 

have predestined a certain number of people to misery, and others 
to happiness, therefore we can repose in His love, and may be per- 
fectly comfortable, if we are not perfectly horrified, because we 
may assume that we ourselves and our friends are predestined to 
happiness, and why should we trouble ourselves about others ? 
God is merciful, but then He is just, and so forth. It would not 
be difficult to go through the usual round of popular statements 
about God. But when we examine from whence our theologians 
got all their information about God and Christ and mankind and 
the devil, we find that they have taken the Old and the New Testa- 
ment, or bits of either, turned chapters upside down, fitted texts 
on to each other without regard to contexts, joined sentiments 
together which have nothing to do with each other, made no allow- 
ance for idiom, style, phraseology, allegory, poetry, or diversity of 
origin in a mass of records stretching over several thousand years, 
with an unintentional irreverence and an ignorance and falsifica- 
cation to which, perhaps, no other historical work has ever been 
subjected. And the result ? The result is our popular theology, 
a patchwork God, an artificial Christ, and a scheme of redemption 
irreconcilable with any intelligible theory of either God or Christ, 
so that John Wesley was tempted to declare that " God as usually 
represented to us was more of a devil than a God." There is rea- 
son to fear that it is the simplest and most fundamental of Chris- 
tian truths that would sound newest in men's ears to-day. We 
preach too often in place of Christ's Gospel, a human theology 
which is neither reasonable nor Christian. Some of it is the product 
of the monkish scholastic mind of a world that has passed away. 
Some of it was shaped amid the violent excitements and reaction- 
ary strifes of the Reformation. It is not too much to say if men 
now doubt of God and their future life, it is greatly because they 



40 THE NA TURE AND A TTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

can no longer believe many dogmas of an hereditary theology 
which is the only exponent of Christianity they know. I would 
not be understood as wishing to attack theology or decry dogma. 
But I would make the distinction that theology is not the faith. 
That " the faith once delivered " is unchanging and unchangeable. 
Theology on the contrary is only the creature of man's appre- 
hension of Divine truth. Hence theology must change, must 
move with the movement of the human mind, and its history is 
only the record of its growth. It is our part to carry on its pro- 
gress, and for this we must recognize its deficiencies. If we clear 
it from its errors we strengthen it and do it service. 

Now for many years, a false theology has been holding up to 
man, ideas of God and man wholly inadequate to the enlarged and 
refined conceptions of the age. These ideas were adequate to the 
past, for they were the product of the past, but they have 
fallen below the intellectual and moral level of the present. 
They are handed down from days when sound scholarship 
was unknown, when man's only aim was to find support for 
theories, and his only study how to warp and blind the Bible 
language to make it fit the hybred philosophies of the schools. 
They come from misreading Scripture, they spring from that 
blind literalism against which I have warned you, — a literalism 
that kills because it misses the spirit of truth. They are the 
human outgrowth which has buried and choked the simple truths 
of the Gospel. There is something of Algebra in every science. 
If you lose a first principle, you will never comprehend the results 
of the study, and a mist will settle down in your mind over the 
whole department of knowledge. And this is particularly true of 
the subject before us, for as one's idea of God enters into all the 
doctrines we believe, error or ignorance in this fundamental of all 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 41 

faith, darkens our perception of every other truth. Besides, un- 
worthy ideas concerning God re-act injuriously on a man's own 
character, and Lord Bacon truly said that "it is better to have no 
opinion of God, than to have a false one." 

In the previous dissertation, I have spoken of God's Hoi)'- 
Word as being the foundation on which the Church builds all her 
teachings. It is all important then to learn what the Bible teaches 
us of God Himself, for a true knowledge of God is the highest of 
all knowledge. We must .know God in order to become like 
Him ; and when we become like Him, we have salvation. Come 
with me then to the first element of knowledge, and help me to lay 
in its appropriate place this fundamental truth, and you will find 
an easier access into all the affiliated and dependent truths which 
over-lie it, and gain a happier insight into all those resultant mat- 
ters which arrange themselves on the line of our investigations. 
The existence of God is an apprehension of the mind direct and in- 
tuitive. It comes up conjointly with the idea of our existence, when 
logically considered, and indissolubly, as the necefsary condi- 
tion of it. The universe is, and reason descries it as conditioned 
and dependent, and as effected by a cause beyond itself — in a word 
descries it as a creation. A second cause there is, and there 
must be a first. The created gives the uncreated, for how could 
the finite be without the Infinite ? The phenomenal and relative 
without the absolute and eternal. As well might you have matter 
without space — events without time — a river without banks, or a 
valley without hills. There cannot be a dependent being without 
an independent cause, and we must finally come to a Being who 
not only furnishes existence to other beings, but is the ground of 
His own being. This office work of reason is authenticated by 
the Bible. The Bible opens with the declaration " In the begin- 



42 THE NA TURE AND A TTRIBUTES OE GOD. 

ning God created the heavens and the earth." It assumes His 
being as already known to reason, and refers only to what he did. 
It institutes no formulas of proof respecting His being. In study- 
ing the Bible, as I have repeatedly said, we must remember that 
its disclosures of divine truth, are made in accordance with the laws 
and limitations of our intellectual being. It reveals God to us 
through the types of natural analogy, because we could compre- 
hend no other style of revelation ; and its modes of representa- 
tion vary according to the degree of culture attained by those to 
whom they are addressed. God is revealed to the Patriarch, in 
conformity to patriarchal habits of thought ; to the Jew, on the 
level of the Jewish plan of culture — to the disciples of Jesus in all 
His fullness. 

Under the primitive and patriarchal systems, God is usually 
spoken of as though He possessed a human form. He walks upon 
the earth, converses with his creatures, labors, and rests from 
His labor. He is described as eating and drinking, going 
and coming, and is even said to wrestle bodily with man. 
Whatever in this seems to be inconsistent with the more 
spiritual views of Deity, afterwards taught by the Scriptures, is 
sufficiently explained, when we consider that it was impossible 
for the human race in the beginning to apprehend the idea of the 
Divine Personality under any other forms of representation. 
Coming down to the Mosaic economy, there is exhibited to us a 
more elevated view of God. The doctrine of his unity and per- 
sonality is kept inviolate, but the human form vanishes. " No man 
can see Him, and live," represents the popular feeling ; His pres- 
ence is manifested in symbols of fire and cloud, His voice is 
heard in the thunder, and the power of His hand is felt in the 
whirlwind and the storm. The moral elements of his nature be- 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 43 

come more prominent ; He is revealed as a just and holy God 
" who will by no means clear the guilty." And yet He is merci- 
ful, long suffering and gracious. In the popular conception of 
Deity, we still trace, of necessity, the influence of Hebrew modes 
of thought ; He is the God of the Jew, and not of the Gentile ; 
human passions are attributed* to Him, and some things are referred 
to His inspiration, which could more reasonably be ascribed to 
an earthly origin. This is no argument against the divinity of the 
Jewish economy, for a revelation must be adapted to the existing 
degree of human development ; it would be no revelation if it were 
much in advance of the popular apprehension. 

As we follow on the course of Jewish history, and listen to the 
teachings of the later prophets, a still more spiritual conception of 
God gradually dawns upon us ; He ceases to be recognized through 
the medium of material symbols, the physical demonstrations of 
His power and presence, are superseded by the spiritual, and He 
moves upon the heart and mind by the direct and unseen influence 
of His spirit. His attributes and character shine forth with more 
resplendent brightness ; He is revealed as an unchangeable God, 
whose purposes are eternal. " God is not a man, that He should 
lie ; nor the Son of Man that He should repent ; " a loftier view 
of worship is developed, and mere ceremonial holiness gives place 
to spiritual sanctity. At last, Jesus came, and the fullness of the 
Godhead was seen. Types and shadows vanished before the 
reality. The " Man of War " retired to make way for the Prince 
of Peace. The mystery of Godliness, which had been hid from ages 
and from generations, was made manifest. The true ideal of God 
in all its completeness, was clearly exhibited to man. " God is a 
Spirit ! " " God is love! " these were the glorious words of the new 
dispensation. And morning broke upon a darkened world. 



44 THE NA TURE AND A T TRIBUTES OF GOD. 

Careful readers of the Bible cannot fail to have observed in it 
seemingly conflicting statements, in regard to the moral character 
of God. Thus we read : "I am the Lord, I change not ; " but we 
read also, " The Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger." 
"He is not a man, that He should repent," )-et, " It repented the 
Lord that He had made man." God is love, and yet " The wicked 
and him that loveth violence, His soul Ziatet/i." " Fury is not in 
Me," and yet, " The Lord revengeth, and is furious." In the book 
of nature, as well as of revelation, we are compelled to distinguish 
between genuine and apparent truth. We know that in the great 
volume of nature there are many appearances of truth, which are 
quite different from the truth itself. Indeed, among the works of 
God, the absolute truth seldom lies on the surface. It is only ne- 
cessary to refer here, by way of illustration, to the apparent diur- 
nal motion of the heavenly bodies, which we know is so different 
from the real truth, though the world had to wait many centuries 
for a Copernicus to penetrate be)^ond the appearance, and disclose 
the reality. And what more reasonable than to suppose, that in 
this respect, the Word of God should bear some analogy to His 
works. In truth, all must admit that the sensuous appearances 
of truth in the letter of the Scripture, are often quite different from 
the real truth, which usually lies deeper than the surface, and is, 
therefore, concealed from the eye of the casual observer. And 
among these appearances there is that which forms the basis of the 
popular idea, concerning the triune nature of God. That there is 
a real and not merely nominal triunal distinction in the Divine na- 
ture, is evident from many passages of Scripture, but the point. I 
wish to make is, that no doctrine of the Trinity is Scriptural, which 
is not consistent with the absolute oneness of God ; for if there be 
one thing more plainly taught and enforced by Scripture than any- 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 45 

thing else, it is the acknowledgment of the truth that " there is one 
God, and He only is to be worshipped." "lam Jehovah, thy God, 
from the land of Egypt, and thou shalt know no God but Me, for 
there is no Saviour besides Me." " I, even I am He, and there is 
no God with Me." "In that day there shall be one Jehovah and 
His name one." "Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, I am the Lord 
that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, that 
spreadeth abroad the earth by Myself." The Bible abounds in such 
declarations, and language could not possibly be framed stronger 
to declare it. 

Greatly is it to be deplored, then, that notwithstanding such 
emphatic language, theological terms and definitions have come 
into use, requiring great necessity for self-examination, that we be 
not unconsciously led astray from a proper conception of the fun- 
damental truth, "The Lord our God is one Lord." The Latin 
Fathers, believing that a distinct principle in the Divine nature 
was denoted by each of the terms, "the Father, "the Son," and 
" the Holy Ghost," in order to describe it, made use of the am- 
biguous word " persona," for the want of some better word for the 
purpose ; the word " persona " being used as an equivalent to the 
Greek term " Hypostases." Afterwards, when doctrines were in- 
troduced that required distinct personality or existences of Deity to 
sustain them, doctrines unknown to primitive Christianity, the term 
" persona" began to be understood in a sense very different from 
its original signification. What was the exact theological meaning 
of the word " persona " at the time when it was first employed or 
subsequently introduced into the so-called Athanasian Creed, to 
express the nature of the distinction in the Godhead, may be ques- 
tionable, but everybody has an idea, until it is dissipated by meta- 
physics, what is to be understood by the English derivative word 



46 THE NA TURE AjVD A T TRIBUTES OF GOD. 

person. To say that God exists in three persons practically is to 
teach that there are three self-conscious beings, and the conception 
is produced instantly in the mind, of three Gods. You may pro- 
test that you are not using language in its ordinary acceptation ; 
but what does the protest avail, if you go right on and assign to 
the three persons such offices and functions as inevitably beget 
the action of three self-conscious actors in the believer's mind ? 
Is it the words on the. lips, or is it the inmost thought of the 
heart that God regards ? If, therefore, in order to prove that he 
is no tritheist, one should quote the declaration of the Athanasian 
Creed that there are not three Gods, but one God ; this would be 
no more a proof that he is not a tritheist than if he should quote 
the Ten Commandments in order to prove that he never had 
broken them. I speak of the doctrine of the Trinity as commonly 
interpreted. What the doctrine is I am well aware it would be 
exceedingly difficult to state. It seems to be ver)- commonly 
agreed by those affecting to be " evangelical " that there are three 
persons — Father, Son and Holy Ghost — in the Divine nature. They 
are declared to be equal ; all to be infinite ; all to be the same in 
substance ; all to be one. But as soon as the question is raised 
what are we to understand by the word "person,'" the appearance 
of agreement, and often of self-understanding, vanishes. It is a 
pretty sure indication of corruption in theology when it requires 
us to wrest language from its legitimate use, and employ it in 
the Church, as Talleyrand did in the State, to conceal and obscure 
thought rather than reveal it ; darkening counsel by words without 
knowledge. 

The articles of faith imposed in the primitive Church as terms of 
communion were few and simple, but, unfortunately, as men grew 
less pious and more contentious, the schoolmen and theologians 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 47 

grew more minute in determining unnecessary controversies, and 
made more and more things obligatory to be understood than the 
Bible itself. To quote the words of Archbishop Whateley: 
" Though in itself the doctrine so sedulously inculcated through- 
out the Scriptures that there is but one God seems to present no 
revolting difficulty, yet on rising from the disquisitions of many 
scholastic divines on the inherent distinctions of the three Divine 
Persons, a candid reader cannot but feel that they have made the 
unity of God the great and difficult mystery, and have in fact so 
nearly explained it away, and so bewildered the minds of their 
disciples as to drive them to withdraw their thoughts habitually 
from everything connected with the subject as the only mode left 
for the unlearned to keep clear of error." 

No man can assume three persons, meaning three consciences, 
wills and understandings, and still have any intelligent meaning 
in his mind when he asserts that they are yet one. If we think 
of a personal God, we must either think (no matter what we say) 
of one person or of more persons than one ; and as we think so 
we belive. And this latter thought or belief, I submit, is poly- 
theism, however we may seek by an ingenious use of words or 
phrases to conceal the solemn fact from others. A person can 
very well believe in a fact, or a being whose nature he cannot 
comprehend, but no one can believe a proposition the terms of 
which are unknown to him, for all that he does in that case is to 
suspend judgment on a subject of which he knows nothing. Nor 
can it be required that such a proposition should be received as 
a mystery, for when theologians make use of terms without mean- 
ing they only confuse the understanding and call the confusion 
faith. 

The Bible holds steadily and with unqualified emphasis to the 



48 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

teaching that there is one God in contradistinction to all the 
fictitious systems of human device ; and reason has a correspond- 
ing testimony. It asserts that there can be but one Supreme 
Being ; that the supposition of more is a logical absurdity, and 
involves an inherent impossibility. How could there be more 
than one who is infinite? The supposition is a solecism. The 
absolute, the unconditional involve the idea of the universal and 
exclusive. Such a coincidence, such a harmony and likeness 
would be demanded in the case, as effectually to exclude all plu- 
rality. Now do not understand because I object to the term 
person in the commonly received formula that I would teach there 
is no sense in which the doctrine of the Trinity is true, for that 
the Bible teaches the existence of a Divine Trinity is unquestion- 
able. It must also be conceded that in the literal sense of the 
Scriptures this Trinity appears to be a Trinity oi persons, just as it 
appears from the same sense, as if God actually indulged in 
anger, hatred, revenge and fury, and that He repents like one 
who has sinned, or made a mistake. But I have already called 
your attention to the fact that the apparent truth in the letter of 
the Bible is not always to be accepted as the real truth. 

The doctrine of the Trinity rightly conceived is not contra- 
dictory of the primary truth of the unity of God. It is the one 
God of reason, nature and revelation subsisting in the oneness 
of His being, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and reason sees no 
objection to it. She cannot penetrate enough into the essence 
of being, created or Divine, to ascertain what complexity there 
may be in the uniqueness or oneness that is in it. Possibly there 
may be no existing substance absolutely and every way simple. 
It has been frequently shown that diversity in unity is one of the 
great principles of all life, certainly all higher life. In almost 



THE NA TURE AND A TTRIBUTES OF GOD. 49 

every possible form of human thought we acknowledge a diversity 
in unity, often a Trinity in unity ; it reaches through the whole 
constitution of the world. 

If I look at the flame of a lighted candle, I know there is 
light, there is heat, and I see there is form, and yet the form is not 
the heat, and the heat is not the light, and the light is neither form 
nor heat, and yet these three constitute the flame. Diversity in 
unity also extends throughout animated nature. It is more visi- 
ble as we ascend the scale of being through the animal creation, 
until we come to man, a highly complex being, having many di- 
versities in unity within himself, but principally a compound of 
one great trinity in unity — body, intellect and spirit, heart, head, 
hand, feeling, cognition and conation, or as St. Paul states 
it, body, soul and spirit. Thus in us there is — nay, we are as 
we live and move and have our being — a trinity in unity. Now 
raise the principle from the platform of things seen and tem- 
poral, to the sphere of things unseen and eternal ; and is it so 
vast an assumption to say the great laws of life which hold as far as 
ever we can trace them in this world, extend also beyond it, and 
that the things on earth are the patterns of the things in heaven ? 
Is it* so vast an assumption to say that the Divine Life is in har- 
mony with all other life ? 

But here let me say, that the legitimate practical tendency 
of any doctrine is one of the surest tests of its truth or 
falsity. All doctrine is to be regarded not as an end, but 
simply as a means to an end, and that end is life. Doctrine — 
I speak here of religious doctrine — may be considered as the 
science of spiritual life; and like all other sciences, of no value 
unless reduced to practice. Assuming the principle here laid down 
to be correct, I come now to apply it to the subject before us. For 



50 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

if all doctrine has relation to life, and the obvious tendency of any- 
one, when reduced to practice, is to be taken as evidence of its 
truth or falsity, this ought to be eminently true of a doctrine so im- 
portant and as central as that concerning the object of our worship. 
Setting aside the dry, dogmatic formulas concerning the Trinity of 
the schoolmen as not wholly competent to represent the living 
truths of Christianity, and therefore not standing the proposed 
test, let us view the doctrine from another side. Let us examine 
it from a point of view, which though not exhaustive and exclu- 
sive, is yet a view from which we may gain an apprehension of it, of 
much practical importance, and one that can be fairly applied to 
life. 

You know that Christians have disagreed considerably upon 
the great question of man's salvation. They have differed 
in opinion, both as to the nature of this work, and the means by 
which it was accomplished. Some have maintained that faith 
is the all-essential thing, or that we are saved by faith alone. And 
it cannot be denied that there are passages in the Bible which 
appear to favor this doctrine, nay, which appear to teach it very 
plainly. Others have maintained that belief or faith is a matter 
of comparatively little consequence — that men are not saved by 
faith, but by lo/e or charity ; and they too, are ready to meet you 
with their proof texts. Others again have believed and taught 
the doctrine of salvation by works. Some ministers, you know, 
make works the burden of their preaching, and these also quote 
numerous texts of Scripture in support of their view. In the dis- 
sertation on the Holy Scriptures, I spoke of such seeming con- 
tradictory texts. It appears as if the Bible sometimes taught that 
men are saved by faith alone, sometimes by charity alone, and 
sometimes by works alone. I say the Bible appears to teach these 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 51 

three different wa) T s or means of salvation, just as it appears to 
teach the existence of three metaphysical persons in the God- 
head. Let us see whether when Christians take a practical view of 
the Trinity, it be possible for them to differ in regard to the means 
of salvation. Every thought we know is the offspring of some 
affection. It is begotten and born of some love in the will. The 
love, therefore, is truly father of the thought. Indeed all that is 
of heaven in any human soul is actually begotten of divine love, 
and actually protected, fed and nourished by it. Hence God, 
when spoken of with special reference to His love, is not without 
reason, called in Holy Writ, the Heavenly Father. By " the Son," 
which, in the Gospels, primarily denotes the Immanuel or the God 
Incarnate, in a secondary sense, is denoted God, in respect to 
His wisdom. Christ Jesus is therefore said to be made of God 
unto us wisdom. He reveals the will and knowledge of God to 
us, and makes us wise unto salvation. Our Saviour, speaking of 
the bad treatment that John the Baptist and Himself had met with 
from the Jews, says : "But wisdom is justified of her children," 
meaning, I who am the wisdom of God, am justified by you, who 
truly believe in me. 

Divine wisdom is the truth or Word which the Scriptures assure 
us was in the beginning with God, and is God, " And the Word 
was made flesh and dwelt among us." It was by wisdom that God 
established the heavens and founded the earth. It was this wis- 
dom that the Lord possessed from everlasting, from the beginning 
or ever the earth was. It was by wisdom that the Father, we are 
told, resolved to do all His works, first to create, and then to up- 
hold, govern and judge, and afterwards to redeem and save the 
world. All which works in Scripture are assigned to the Son of 
God. The Son of God, Wisdom or Word is also declared to be 



52 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OE GOD. 

the " Light of men," " the true light which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world." And as thought is simply the form 
of affection which brings it forth to view, so God who is Love is 
revealed to us through the Divine Wisdom or Word. Thus it is 
ever the Son which shows us the Father. Nor can we draw 
spiritually near to God except through the truths of the " Word." 
Therefore our Lord speaking as the Divine Logos says : " No one 
cometh unto the Father but by Me." As in nature, heat imparts 
its vivifying power to light, so the love of God is the vital ele- 
ment in divine wisdom or truth. It is this which imparts to truth 
all its quickening and regenerating power, and hence it is written 
" The Son can do nothing of Himself," and again, '* I can of mine 
own self do nothing," "The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth 
the works." 

If agreeable to the popular theology, the Son were a second 
person in the Trinity, yet equal in every respect to the Father, or 
first person, why should He be able to do nothing of Himself? 
Why should He attribute all His works to the Father? Again: 
the Son is spoken of in the New Testament as being gifted with 
the exclusive power of judging. "The Father," it is said, " judg- 
eth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." 
Now, why is it that the Father has nothing to do in so important 
a work as that of judging His intelligent creatures? Why is all 
judgment committed unto the Son ? I know not what reply theo- 
logians would make to these questions, but, according to the view 
of the doctrine I am advocating, the answer is plain. Our Lord 
says of Himself, " I am the Truth," and is it not one of the appro- 
priate offices of truth to judge? Is not this one great purpose for 
which the truth is given, and one of the things it does, when it 
comes to human minds? Whenever we receive any truth, that 



THE NATURE AND A TTRIBUTES OF GOD. 53 

truth immediately passes a judgment upon us — upon our charac- 
ter, conduct and former beliefs. It approves of whatever in our 
minds is in accordance with it, and condemns whatever is in op- 
position to it. All the judgments, therefore, which men render, 
are true and righteous in proportion as they accord with the 
truth. When, therefore, wisdom or truth comes to our minds, it 
reveals to us our real characters. This is the reason the Son, 
which signifies God, in respect to wisdom or truth, says ; " For 
judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not, 
might see," etc., showing that enlightening men, or enabling those 
hitherto blind to see, which we know is exclusively the office of 
truth, is really to execute judgment. And this also shows us 
why "all judgment " is said to have been committed unto the 
Son." And as if to leave no room for doubt on this point, our 
Lord says, on another occasion : " He that rejecteth Me and re- 
ceiveth not My words, hath One that judgeth him ; the Word that 
I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." It is 
God's Word, therefore, which is to judge all men, and His " Word 
is truth." This also explains why it is that the second coming of 
the Lord is uniformly spoken of as the coming of the Son of Man 
to Judge the world ; for the promised second-coming of the Son of 
Man is the coming, as I believe, of the truth in its spiritual sense, 
to the understanding and hearts of men. And is not this judg- 
ment now going on? — that the Son of Man is already coming in 
the clouds of heaven ? — that old things are passing away, and all 
things are being made new? 

Again: the Father is said to be greater than the Son. " My 
Father is greater than I," is a text which, according to the tri-per- 
sonal theory, gives the Unitarian a decided advantage in the argu- 
ment touching the divinity of Christ. But in the practical view of 



54 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

the Trinity I advocate, this text presents no difficulty. The 
Father denotes that prime essential in the Divine character, love, 
and as love is superior to wisdom or truth in point of dignity and 
importance, just as charity is superior to faith (for which we have 
the authority of St. Paul), therefore the Father is said to be greater 
than the Son. Then we are taught that there is a most intimate 
union between the Father and the Son — so intimate that they are 
said to be one." "I and my Father are one." How one ? It is 
plain if, according to the popular theology, there are two persons, 
they cannot be one person. They can only be one in spirit or 
essence. And here again the tri-personal theory gives the Uni- 
tarian a decided advantage. For if the oneness predicated of the 
Father and the Son is simply a unity o spirit, all good men are 
divine in the same sense, although in a lesser degree. But, accord- 
ing to the simple, practical view of the Trinity I would have you 
take, the Father and Son are really and unequivocally one, as 
soul and body are one, as heat and light are one in the sun, or 
affection and thought in man. 

And thus I might go on multiplying texts of scripture almost 
indefinitely in which Father and Son are mentioned, and showing 
how easy of interpretation they all are, and what a clear, con- 
sistent, and rational sense they yield for all practical purposes ; 
while, according to the metaphysical view of the schoolmen, they 
are — some of them at least — so hard to be understood, and embar- 
rassed with so many and great difficulties. 

The translators of our English Bible have done more, perhaps, 
than all others, to impress the popular mind of Christendom with 
the belief that the Holy Spirit, so often spoken of in the New 
Testament, is a distinct Person. As it was their confirmed belief 
that there are three persons in the Godhead, they undoubtedly en- 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 55 

deavored to make their translation conform to this idea ; and ac- 
cordingly they uniformly translated Pneuma Hagion," Holy Ghost." 
But every Greek scholar knows perfectly well that Pneuma is 
mis-translated, when translated by a word which conveys the idea 
of a distinct person. The word has no such meaning. Its pri- 
mary signification is a breathing or influence — some principle, 
power or influence sent forth from a person. Could it, with any 
propriety, be said of a. person that he was potired out upon others ? 
That others were filled with him ? That he was communicated or 
that the)'- received him internally by the imposition of hands, or by 
being breathed upon ? Or that others could be made partakers of 
him ? But this and all other language in the New Testament, used 
in reference to the Holy Spirit, becomes easy of interpretation if 
we understand the Holy Spirit not a person but an influence, or 
that Divine and Holy Proceeding of love and wisdom from God, 
corresponding to the natural proceeding of heat and light from the 
sun, and their combined operation throughout the domains of 
nature. 

Is it objected that the Holy Spirit must be a Divine Person dis- 
tinct from the Father and the Son because it descended as a dove 
upon Jesus? It also descended as " cloven tongues as of fire" on 
the Apostles, and was heard as "a rushing mighty wind." God 
was once in "the still small voice" heard by Elijah ; will it be 
argued that "the still small voice " was a distinct person? All 
such Divine appearances symbolize and represent Divine qualities. 
Innocence, purity and love were represented by the " dove" which 
descended on Jesus. The might of inspired utterance was repre- 
sented by the " cloven tongues as of fire," which " sat" upon the 
apostles. The power of truth from God dispersing error, was 
represented by the " rushing mighty wind." The gentle pleadings 



56 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

of Divine truth were symbolized in " the still small voice." The 
baptism of "fire "was the holy unction of love with which the 
Lord will baptize His people. We are taught to believe that every 
regenerate man is created anew in the image of God, and it fol- 
lows from what I have said that the true conception of the Holy 
Trinity tends to incite us to the honest and faithful exercise of all 
our faculties. It shows us that the head and heart and hand are 
all concerned in the work of salvation, and should all act together 
as one; that since man is gifted with an understanding, a will and 
an ability to do, it was meant that he should be a believer, a lover 
and a doer; or that he should understand, will and obey the laws of 
his spirit's life. Therefore the sayings of each of the apostles are 
true — that " love is the fulfilling of the law;" yet " without faith 
it is impossible to please God ; but " faith without works is dead." 
A correct view of the doctrine of the Trinity gives a peculiar 
significance to the formula commanded by our Lord to be used in 
baptism. Baptism is a symbolic rite signifying regeneration or to be 
spiritually recreated — made altogether new in our feelings, thoughts 
and actions. In*other words the spiritual import of baptism,' in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost " is 
to have our human will purified or brought in conformity with 
Divine love ; pur understanding enlightened by Divine truth and 
our life directed towards good works and the performance of 
noble, righteous and manly deeds. If this exposition of the 
Trinity exposes me to the charge of Sabellianism, that is, the heresy 
of maintaining but one Person under three attributes or manifesta- 
tions, I explain that I purposely do not intrude upon the inmost 
nature of Deity either by assertion or denial, but my object is 
simply to bring God nigh as our Heavenly Father, in the methods of 
His love, and the behests of the future. 



THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. $7 

The term Trinity is an algebraic sign for an unknown mysterious 
relation. But there are those who cannot endure the mystery. 
They cannot put up with an obscure undefined idea, and they for- 
get that even if we say nothing of the Trinity, it is not possible for 
us to find out the Almighty to perfection, or even our own soul, 
and as St. Augustine admits: " Three persons are spoken of not in 
order to express the truth, but in order not to keep silence re- 
specting it." 

But the church of the future is not likely to quibble over 
phrases with a view of evading the heresy of Sabellianism. 
By-and-by we shall not be in such a mortal fright of heresy, be- 
cause we shall gain a clearer insight into the limits of the human 
mind, and the imperfection of all human language. We shall per- 
ceive that the most correct theology can be no more than an 
approximation to the truth, and consequently the most definite 
language about God only an imperfect and partial attempt to ex- 
press that which cannot be intellectually apprehended in its height 
and depth, and length and breadth ; and must therefore forever 
remain unuttered and unutterable, a consciousness, a life, a spirit. 
And this will come to us as time rolls on with a growing sense of 
peace and trust. It is just the attempt to define " person and sub- 
stance " in relation to the Infinite God which has brought such 
confusion upon the Church ; such terms supply a very poor and 
meagre expression for the great thought which is in our souls ; in- 
deed they are hardly worth fighting about ; we can conjure with 
them to any extent to evade this heresy and that, but it is poor 
work after all, merely a concession to dogmatic imbecility. We 
may strain after something about God when there is nothing in 
man to receive it; it will not even come within the laws of thought, 
but we will attain a knowledge of the Supreme in just' the degree 



58 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

that we will suffer Him to mould us into His own glorious im- 
age, for I maintain that the true nature of the Divine Trinity re- 
veals itself in the constitution of the finite human being and finds 
here its only complete and rational explanation. Any doctrine of 
the nature of God which fails to teach this will sooner or later be 
seen to have no foundation, and will be discarded by the wise and 
good as a human invention. We were made to be the recipients 
in a finite degree of each and every element that enters into the 
Divine character. We can know nothing of God's love save as its 
nature or quality is revealed to us in the love that we feel and 
which flows into our hearts from Him who is love itself. We can 
know nothing of God's wisdom except so far as that humble 
measure of our human wisdom, which we receive from Him, 
shadows forth or in some measure images the Divine. And so 
of God's mercy, justice, long-suffering, tenderness, benevolence, 
foresight, righteousness and all the other Divine attributes. The ar- 
gument for any doctrine based merely upon its prevalence is always 
suspicious when we consider the tendencies of a corrupt human 
nature to bring down Divine truth to its own level. The tempta- 
tion is strong and subtle to yield to the corrupt currents of opinion 
and be swept along with them, but when we lay our finger upon a 
doctrine which has been the animus or mind of the church through 
all its most fearful apostasies, the argument from its prevalence is 
dissipated. History as well as reason turns full against it. 

The first historical development of Christianity was in strict ac- 
cordance of God in Unity of being, brought near to man in the 
Divine Saviour. The Pentecostal Scene fulfilled the promise of 
the Comforter. It was not produced by preaching Tri-personality 
and a Vicarious atonement. It was produced by preaching Christ 
and the resurrection with repentance and remission of sins ; and as 



THE XATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 59 

for the Holy Spirit which carne as a baptism or fire, it was said of 
the Glorified Saviour, " He hath shed forth this which ye now see 
and hear." So the first, conversions were made, and the first 
churches were built up. The dogmatic era of the church had not 
yet begun. They simply looked up to the Saviour, the God become 
man, and "the Holy Spirit fell on them " (a distinct person in- 
deed ?) and its power rolled in upon them in surges of energy, 
peace and love. No student of history, we think, will affirm that 
there is the least hint of tri-personality in the Godhead, in the writ- 
ings extant of the Apostolic Fathers. Later down, we have ex- 
plicit statement from Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, of 
the essentials of the Christian faith, and what had "always been 
believed " in the Church. In these, the New Testament form both 
of language and doctrine, is preserved ; but there is no lisp of tri- 
personality or a substitutive atonement. These old creeds are re- 
freshing, for they have the breath of the morning hour. But the 
dogmatic activity of the Church was at hand. Precisely in the 
degree that it declined in Godliness, and the primal graces disap- 
peared, was the Divine personality cloven and separated in its 
authorized formulas. The Arian controversy raged for more than 
half a century, in which the worst passions were unloosed upon 
both sides. What a surface do these times present, from which to 
reflect the divine doctrines — this Surging Sea of human hatred and 
strife ! The Athanasians ejected from the primitive creed the doc- 
trine of the Divine Unity, and two persons began to appear. The 
Arians rejected the doctrine of the Saviour's essential Divinity and 
God receded into the dim and inaccessible heavens. Which party 
was to prevail was long doubtful. The Church split into two nearly 
equal factions, and it seemed a drawn battle, except as one or the 
other allied itself with the civil power. How they prevailed, and 



60 THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 

by what process the ancient Anti-Trinitarianism " died out," in- 
volve a very interesting passage of history, and one which is cal- 
culated to make a man exceedingly modest in urging an argument 
from the "quod Semper, qtwd ubique, quod ab omnibus." Uni- 
formity of faith followed. Tri-personality became, if not the " quod 
Semper," yet undoubtedly the " qtwd ubique, quod ab omnibus." 

Then followed the long dreary arctic night of the Church. 
The litanies went up to three persons, and along with them the 
half-stifled groans and half-muffled cries of oppressed and weary 
human nature. From the cold regions or burning sands of exile, 
from souls slain under the altar, from the midst of blazing fagots, 
from dungeons underground, from "Alpine Mountains cold," 
went up the prayer, " O, Lord, how long ! " while from the cathe- 
drals, churches and monasteries, went up the worship of Tritheism. 
The 'age was dark ; and a very pertinent question arises, What 
made the age dark? Any age becomes dark just in the degree that 
the knowledge of God is lost. Any age is dark in proportion as 
its worship becomes untrue. The idea of God is vital, central ; all 
our other ideas are fitted to it, and borrow their light from it, as the 
plants borrow their light and their beams from the sun. All our 
duties, notions of man, of duty, of neighborly love, of nature, and 
revelation, of this life and the next ; of regeneration, redemption 
and preparation for heaven, are determined and vitalized by our 
conception of God, for that is the inmost of all our thoughts and 
actions. Thus the Christian idea of God sinking down into the 
ages gathered their darkness about it deeper and deeper, and was 
dissipated and divided, and ended in confirmed Tritheism if not 
Polytheism ; and then there was pagan night over all the Church, 
and man was a wolf to man. 

We have not time to trace the influence of Tritheism on the 



THE NA TURE AND A T TRIBUTES OF GOD. 61 

religion of modern Protestantism but we think it has been disas- 
trous enough. Under Protestantism it allied itself organically 
with the doctrine of putative, instead of genuine righteousness, 
and therefore preserved all its power to hurt and to kill. To this 
we owe all the deadly Antinomianism of Protestantism which, these 
three hundred years, has separated faith from charity, religion 
from life, and devotion from honesty. Perhaps if we summon all 
the facts to bear witness, we might hurt the oil and the wine of 
neighborly kindness. They are patent enongh in the history of 
the sects. In days of darkest corruption, and amid the most awful 
wickedness of an apostate church, there have been multitudes 
who have lived and died in the sanctity of a genuine faith. And 
what has been the doctrine which has laid hold upon them and 
saved them ? I believe it will be found to have been simple faith 
in Jesus Christ, as a Divine Saviour, rising above the tangles of 
Tritheism. This has been the saving element which no corrup- 
tions could completely overlay. It is a personal vital union of 
the disciple with his Saviour that causes the Divine life to pass 
into him and transform him into the Divine image and produce 
from within, outwardly, not a putative, but a genuine righteous- 
ness. This and not the Tripersonality has been the renewing 
power of Christianity, and wrought all the graces and the righte- 
ousness, and the zeal, and the piety distinctively Christian, for 
this is where God meets the soul and has his tabernacle with man. 
This is the door through which he comes and floods the heart 
with His strength and love. 



SIN 



I have endeavored to impress you with the fact that there is a 
great deal of modern theology, which has the reputation of being 
orthodox, but for which there is no sure warrant of Scripture. 
Skeptics have ever made it a reproach against theology, and even 
the faithful have found it a painful mvstery, that there have sprung 
from its teachings so many various dogmas and creeds, all based 
on seeming truths, yet in many cases mutually irreconcilable. 
That there may be a variety of aspects in which the same truth can 
be regarded, maybe justly granted. But that propositions should 
arise, all apparently truthful to a certain extent, and vet incon- 
sistent ; while from the diverse attempts to reconcile such contra- 
dictions, or from disputes as to which of these discordant truths 
is most essential and vital, and should, therefore, override the 
rest, doubts and confusion should ensue, is a most serious dii- 
ficulty. It ought nevertheless rather to convince us that there is 
error in the premises whence these discrepancies are drawn, than 
shake our faith in either revelation or reason. For it is self- 
evident that truth must be uniform. The fundamental principles, 
and the fundamental facts of God's moral government must be 
consistent with themselves and each other. He cannot be the 



SIN. 63 

only being in the universe whose character is falsified bv His 
voluntary acts. Hence His word cannot manifest Him in a 
light which reason mav not discover to be consistent, benevolent, 
and just. Whatever system of theology fails to effect such a 
reconcilement, the fact argues a misinterpretation of Scripture, and 
the subject requires reconsideration. 

The subject of the origin of moral evil, which comes before us 
in turn, in our series of dissertations on primary doctrines, has 
always necessarily held a prominent place in the various systems 
of theologv. No subject has so embarrassed the claims of 
religion as that of the existence of sin. Theology has been put 
to her defences here, and many have deemed them lame and inad- 
equate to the encounter imposed. Irreligion has made her boast 
at this point, published her scandal, and hurled her defiances. 
Respecting God. as related to the prevention of sin, she has said, 
" If He could, and would not, where is His goodness ? " And it, 
cannot be denied that replies have been faint, and timidly given 
from the friends of truth. Although we cannot say that this or 
that definition of the doctrine is the true one to the exclusion of 
all others, yet there is one theory which has obtained wide 
acceptance, which we need have little hesitation in pronouncing 
positively false, and I mention it byway of warning, as being part 
of a system of pseudo-theology, based on the barbaric principle 
that might makes right. A system to which I will again allude 
when I come to speak of the doctrine of the atonement. The 
God of such theology is in His own being, self-sufficient. He 
created the world for His own glory, and man to pay Him wor- 
ship. He has the rights of a feudal lord over his serfs. We have 
no business to judge of the right or wrong of His actions — the 
Sovereign is above the law. And then man having the mis- 



64 SIN. 

fortune to inherit a diseased moral nature is strangely enough 
held accountable for that misfortune. He is by nature born in 
sin, and a child of wrath. He is under a curse. With evil pro- 
pensities, and little strength to resist them, he is thrown in a 
world of temptation, and left to take his very slight chance of 
escaping eternal damnation at the hands of a just God, who hateth 
iniquity. 

It is no wonder that men of clear head revolt against such a 
caricature of Christ's Gospel, and prefer no religion to a bad one. 
Where in this is the great truth of the Divine Fatherhood ? Where 
God's patient, tender, self-forgetting love, so beautifully taught us 
in the parables of our blessed Lord ? Where St. Paul's grand 
idea that He must always, and through everything, remain true to 
His own nature? "If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful ; 
He cannot deny Himself." It would seem that this theology has 
done for us what the great Apostle believed impossible when He 
exclaimed, " I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 
creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is 
in Christ Jesus." 

That God does not hold us morally responsible for the sins of 
our first parents, we ought not to feel obliged to argue. Such a 
displeasure would be a mere resentment alike unphilosophical 
and unjust. That God would harbor such vindictiveness toward 
a race of innocent beings, simply because they were that which 
He Himself had made them, thus punishing them for His own 
act, is utterly incredible and revolting. Apart from its intrinsic 
impossibility, God Himself expressly declares that He does not 
punish the children for the sins of their fathers, though undoubt- 
edly, under the inflexible laws of His material universe, the 



SZJV. 65 

natural consequences of sin may extend beyond the perpetrator. 
Nor is the injustice implied in such a view the only argument 
against it. If Adam were made grand and perfect why did he fall ? 
He did fall, therefore why was he not made perfect ? And we are 
led to inquire further, why, if God foresaw that the whole human 
race were to be thus displeasing to Him, did He not refrain, either 
from their original creation, or from their continuance after the 
transgression of Adam. It can hardly be believed that He would 
preserve the existence of a race in which every new birth awak- 
ened new sentiments of disfavor and displeasure. 

The view I would warn you against, represents to us, God cre- 
ating man in a high and responsible condition, as a moral being, 
his native character and faculties — his rank in the universe, his 
relations to his Maker, and his prescribed destiny being far more 
exalted than they have at any time since been exhibited. It tells 
us that scarcely had he been formed in this perfect mould and in- 
augurated in this lofty place and mission — scarcely had his Maker 
pronounced him "very good," ere by a single step he fell from his 
high estate, and sank into corruption, wretchedness and ruin. 
For this the system of the Universe offers no analogy. Nowhere 
among all the kingdoms of Nature, can an object be found, which 
is stamped with the mark of its own failure and disappointment. 
But this theory teaches that man must be excepted. Am I deny- 
ing original sin ? On the contrary, I would affirm and must affirm, 
that we are all suffering, not only from actual sin, which we have 
committed, but from a certain original tendency to si'n, for which 
we are personally not responsible. And this is not only the as- 
sertion of the theologians or old prophets. The scientist will tell 
you those bad tendencies you call sinful are inherited tendencies, 
inherited from your father and grandfather, and even their ancestors,. 



66 SIN. 

and so up to the old Adam, whoever he was. Yes ! we carry in 
us the burden of past generations, we carry in us the taint of 
their original sin, in our members, and in our mental tendencies 
and emotions, and it is a most solemn and practical reflection 
that as tendencies are inherited from the past, so tendencies are 
transmitted to the future, so that those of us who have children, 
leave for good or evil, indelible marks on the universe. The 
Catholic Church, in her corporate capacity, has never dogmatised 
upon the subject to the extent of setting forth a definition which 
was exclusive. It would therefore, be grossly presumptuous for 
any individual teacher to attempt to do so. Considering, how- 
ever, that a certain degree of latitude is fairly allowed, it may be 
useful to explain the doctrine of the origin of moral evil in har- 
mony with the spirit of the age and the general teachings of the 
Bible. 

In turning to contemplate the moral history of our race, we 
naturally revert to the circumstances of its origin, as recorded in 
the Book of Genesis. In an examination of that book for the 
purpose, it is irrelevant to discuss whether Moses was its author, 
or only its compiler, for whatever may be the date or origin of 
this history in its present form, it does not affect its nature or au- 
thority as an inspired revelation, disclosing, under some guise or 
other, the origin of the human race. But it is very important to 
bear in mind that the language used in the narrative is of the 
most archaic and primitive character ; so simple that its words, 
few and typical, are still invested with the purely physical ideas 
which originated them. The words are simple, the style artless. 
The person who wrote down the story of Eden, talks of the 
Almighty as of a man walking in the garden in the cool of the 
day, smelling burnt meat, and resting after work and so forth. It 



SIN. 67 

is a mode of expression reflecting a state of human culture of a 
simple age. The hidden meaning, whatever it be, is certainly not in 
the diction, not in the style, but mainly in the objects themselves. 
One thing is evident ; there is much meaning condensed in a very 
small compass. The emblems are a Rosetta stone awaiting a Cham- 
pollion. They are like the cuneiform tablets before the key was dis- 
covered. Indeed one of the greatest evidences of the truth of Divine 
Revelation is that even the sacred writers themselves appear not 
to have comprehended fully, the spiritual import of the truths 
they recorded ; thus showing that they were inspired by a power 
exterior to themselves. I mention this to guard you in your read- 
ing, from being too much restricted, and governed by the letter of 
the sacred record. It was given to the inspired writers of 
Holy Scripture to condense mighty truths in a single sentence ; 
such great truths that one phase of them appears to have filled 
their whole minds completely so that they could not grasp an- 
other. But there are other and still other truths underneath, in 
rich and endless strata. 

There appears to be a recognition of this principle of progres- 
sive spiritual enlightenment, in our Lord's words, addressed to His 
Disciples : " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye can- 
not bear them now." And it seems also to be implied by St. 
Paul, in his epistle to the Hebrews. " Strong meat" the Apostle 
writes, " belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who, 
by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both 
good and evil." Such development of spiritual knowledge is in 
accord with what we should expect, for there is no end of man's 
progress in knowledge of the works of God, and if the word of 
God bears any resemblance to His works, why should there not 
be a progressive evolution of deeper and still deeper truth from 



68 SIN. 

His word ? The suggestions of common sense indicate, that if the 
Bible be a revelation from God, it would be impossible to unfold 
all its mysterious fullness at once. If it were written for all men, 
and for men to the end of time ; its treasures must be yielded up 
slowly ; there must be " pastures new," and rich waving harvest 
fields, for all generations. Sculpture, architecture, and the de- 
cipherings of discovery in every form from Egypt. Babylon, 
Nineveh and Jerusalem, are giving them new solutions ; while 
prophecy, philosophy and science, are keeping these divine veri- 
ties ever new, by elucidating and unfolding their mysteries ; and 
thus in the ages yet to come, as in the past, it will continue 
equally true that: — " Every scribe which is instructed unto the 
Kingdom of Heaven, is like unto a man that is a householder, 
which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old" 

There never was a time when there was such an intense anxiety 
to know something certain about God, and about His relations 
with man. Formerly these questions were settled by creeds and 
formularies, but our age seems to have grown somewhat impatient 
with dogmatic assertions, which cannot be understood or appro- 
priated ; and when one finds religious truth stated in such a man- 
ner as to obscure its connection with life and ordinary experience, 
he is tempted to become either a shallow formularist or an infidel. 
Do not think that I am blind to what dogma has done for the 
world. Do you suppose that I deny the truth which, in another 
age, to other nations and other civilizations, they nobly strove to 
utter? I trust I am not so thankless nor so foolish. It is not dogma 
with which I quarrel, but with fixed dogma. It is not with theology, 
but with that petrified form of theology which never alters, and 
which ignores the fact that although truth may be fixed and abso- 
lute, our appreciation of truth must be relative and progressive. 



SIN. 69 

We learn from the Word of God that there was a time when this 
present world of ours " was without form and void." There were 
no bright orbs shining in the heavens — God was all in all. All 
else existed only in the mind of God. But there it did exist in 
mind and intention, and this is taught by the words of St. James, 
" Known unto God are all His works from the beginning." 

All that God has done, and all that He will do, has been, and 
will be, merely the accomplishment of designs which existed in the 
mind of God before the world was. We shall see by and by the 
importance of marking this. At length the time arrived for God 
to begin to convert these intentions and designs into realities. I 
say God began to realize these designs which had previously ex- 
isted only in the Divine mind, because the realization was, as I 
wish to impress you, a gradual process, and even yet, as we know, 
is not completed. I have spoken of the law of progress, because 
it is in grasping the fact that all things progress and develop, 
that we become sensible of the divinely active and intelligent 
principles of divine and human life. The universe is simply God 
unfolding Himself in exterior forms ; His subjective powers be- 
coming objective. And if He be, in the essential quality of His 
nature, an active, creative Being, He must of course have been 
always so. If He radiates light and heat to-day, He must have 
done the same as long as He has existed. The present forms of 
creation undoubtedly had a beginning in time, but we are not to 
infer that God never put forth His creative power previously, and 
in other ways, through the countless ages of eternity. Now try 
and carry your thoughts far back into the past, to a time when the 
whole of this universe which we see — these stars, these planets, 
this earth — formed but one immense fiery mist. Astronomers tell 
us, and I believe the speculation is accepted by our best scientific 



7o SIN. 

men, that this universe was nothing but a fiery homogeneous mass, 
or matter reduced to a state of vapor in intense heat. As time 
goes on, this mass begins to cool, and as it cools, a motion, a 
rotary motion, is set up, and from that motion the vapor condensing 
into solidifying masses, the planets are thrown off in rings ; and 
thus we have the planets, the sun being in the centre of what is 
known as our solar system. This theory is called " the nebula 
hypothesis," and it illustrates the law of progress. Let us now 
single out the earth. Go back to the world's beginning as described 
in the book of Genesis. I do not plead for the exact correspond- 
ence of the Bible as a statement of scientific truth with fact, for it 
was never intended that revelation should anticipate the discove- 
ries of modern science, but for all that I do not think sufficient 
justice has been done to the account given in Genesis as unfolding 
practically, the kind of order in which this world came to be devel- 
oped. Substantially, what do we read ? We read of the earth 
being " without form, and void ; " in fact, very much in the state in 
which science tells us that the world has certainly been at some 
remote time. Then the next thing we read is, that " the Spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters." 

Now, the latest researches of science tell us that motion is the 
beginning of all progress, the source of all development. Then we 
find light and heat mentioned in connection with fertility and 
vegetation, differentiation of life, and we know that heat and light 
are only modes of motion. I need not point out how the progress 
is traced up through the organization of species, reptiles, fishes, 
birds and beasts, culminating in man, and taking what are called 
so many days or ages, for we need not suppose ordinary days to 
be meant ; just as when we speak of " the present day," we do not 
mean to-day, but the present age. Nothing that God does is great 



SIN. 11 

at first. All this picturing of God's rolling a flood of worlds into 
space is merest poetry or pulpit rhetoric. All God's great were 
once little. He never spoke a whole paradise into existence at 
once, so far as we know. Look at the smallness of the begin- 
nings, and the slowness of the movements, as geology and Genesis 
unite in teaching us. One by one God made things. It was a 
long operation, related by Moses through a whole chapter. Then 
when the earth had become capable of causing seed to germinate, 
we do not read that the Lord God made every plant of the field 
before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it 
grew, but it is said : ''And the Lord God planted a garden," ,- and 
out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree. Om- 
nipotence that can do instantaneously submits to the laws of 
progress. Thus the Almighty, having brought His material crea- 
tion by successive and advancing steps of preparation toward the 
crowning work of man, was ready to usher him into being. Being 
on the threshold of His moral scheme, we may suppose the Deity 
planning in advance the method by which He will raise His moral 
system upon the foundation so slowly and elaborately reared for 
it. When we remember the uniform mode of action exhibited in all 
His previous works, there seems but one course that He will adopt. 
He never has begun with completeness, and He never will do so, 
but every step shall be an advance upon the preceding. It is not 
material to know whether Adam physically, or the race as typified 
by him, was created directly from the dust of the ground by the slow 
process of evolution up through the various lower grades of animal 
existences, as some modern philosophers and scientists contend. 
Scripture can be quoted on either side of the question. " In 
nature progress begins," Mr. Darwin asserts, "by physical im- 
provement attained through the sharpest process of weeding out 



72 SIN. 

weak specimens, and leaving only the more capable specimens of 
any type." Suppose we grant it. How, then, did nature, with this 
for its great principle, attain to the law of pity and sympathy for 
weakness — the law of self-sacrifice — the law of Christ? 

Is it not obvious that the more clearly Mr. Darwin and others 
show that improvements in physiological organizations are attained 
through close competition, the more certainly they prove to us that 
human nature in its highest form — the Christian nature — has some 
other and very different root from physiological law, and that the 
charity, pity, and self-sacrifice for inferiors, which is of the -essence 
of the cross, is no development of that law which governs physio- 
logical progress, but is of that nobler competition which reverses it ? 
The Christian revelation which teaches that man in his natural 
state is eminently selfish and carnal, and needs spiritual regenera- 
tion and extraneous assistance, is infinite, strengthened by the dis- 
covery that there is nothing in the lower world below man, which 
could possibly be developed into that divine principle which is 
God's special gift to man, and which makes our highest glory con 
sist — not in the succumbing of the weak to the strong — but in the 
self-sacrifice of the strong for the weak. 

I mention this theory of " Evolution," the truth of which is far 
from being established principally to illustrate, that in scientific 
investigation, discoveries that at first may seem incitants for doubt, 
if properly regarded, may be found to supply new weapons of 
faith. Even if the extreme theory of evolution should be generally 
accepted, it is confessedly but a theory, and can never prove it im- 
possible for nature (which is another name for God), to strike in at 
any assumed point in the grand succession, to institute a new line 
of development of a higher order, and with reference to which all 
preceding evolutions had been preparatory. However far back, or 



S/A'. 73 

to however low an origin we trace the frame-work of man, we can 
not go further down than Genesis and St. Paul lead us. " The 
Lord God made man out of the dust of the earth." " The first 
man is of the earth, earthy." In Sanscrit, man is called '• the 
thinker;" in Greek, "the gazer upward;" in Latin, "the 
speaker," all terms celebrating some ennobling attribute. But 
when we turn to the language of Hoi}'- Scripture, we find him 
called "Adam," earth — " ish enosh," the feeble one, the weekly. 
You tell me that it is a scientific fact that I come from the dust — 
the Book of Genesis told me so before science discovered it ; and 
in the very lowest types of living creatures, there are prophecies of 
the life by which I am animated. You tell me that my body by 
evolution, was the result of a fixed law, and the Psalmist exclaims 
in concurrence : " Thine e) r es did see my substance, ) r et being im- 
perfect ; and in thy Book all my members were written, which in 
continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." 
You tell me of physical law, but there is another and higher law, 
the law of my moral nature. It is nqt the descent, but the ascent 
of man, that reveals his true nature. In our outward frame, we 
may bear resemblance to the lowest cf the animal creation, but in 
the spiritual, innermost being, we share with God Himself. The 
real destiny of man depends not on the advance of his material or 
intellectual grandeur, but on his moral nature, on what we are, on 
what we do, on what we love, on what we hate. 

By whatever process, however, the race of man originated, 
whether by gradual development, or immediate creation, it appears 
that Adam — possibly a generic name — was at one time possessed of 
an innocency and simplicity of character, which, from his not having 
the moral sense or apprehension of right and wrong, was akin to 
that appertaining to childhood. Nobody can read the first chapter of 



74 SIN. 

Genesis independently of the glosses of Milton's " Paradise Lost," 
and the delusive myths of popular teaching, without seeing that 
what is described there is not the ideal creature which we have put 
together out of our imagination and devout fancy; but an unculti- 
vated being of low intelligence and feebler will, giving way to the 
first temptation that crossed his path. In fact, Adam as a man, 
was evidently very much the kind of being which Mr. Darwin and 
and Herbert Spencer have described. Our first parents were, 
nevertheless, so far elevated above other creatures with endow- 
ments and germinal possibilities — so much more possessed of the 
attributes of God Himself, that they were said to have borne the 
Divine image and likeness. I do not think that the Bible is a re- 
pository of scientific truth, its value is of another description ; at 
the same time it is only fair, when we hear the Bible held up to 
ridicule by men of science, to point out that the practical and sub- 
stantial order of progress indicated in Genesis is, after all, not so 
very far wide of the mark. We read there an account of human 
nature, and a very detailed account given of a progression from 
the simple to the complex, roughly similar to what we now know 
must have taken place. At some time of their existence — as has 
also been the case of all their descendants who have reached 
years of discretion — our first parents acquired the moral sense or 
apprehension of right and wrong, represented as the partaking of 
the " tree of the knowledge of good and evil;" and thus becoming 
morally responsible, sin became at once a possibility, and speedily 
a fact. The moral scheme, if it designed to leave man a free agent, 
could do no more than give him the ability and opportunity to 
shape and determine his own character, and the first step towards 
this was, of course, to make him a creature capable of having one. 
My limits do not suffice to elucidate this view by lengthened argu- 



SIN. 75 

ment, but I would have you mark the distinction that the tree of 
whose fruit our first parents partook, is not called the tree of good 
and evil, but the "tree of knowledge" or apprehension, "of good 
and evil," which whatever it was, we are told is an attribute of 
Deity also. 

I would have you also note that the so-called sentences or pen- 
alties passed upon Adam and Eve, were only an enumeration of 
some of the duties, restraints and conditions ot life, incident to 
the more exalted but more hazardous state of existence into 
which they had entered ; such conditions and restraints as al- 
ways devolve on nations and tribes emerging from the indolence 
and licence of barbarism, and such incentives for the practice of 
industry and virtue, as a loving and prudent father might urge, 
when some of his family leave the ease, comfort and protection of 
the parental roof, to battle with the world. Sin becoming a possi- 
bility by the new condition of things, brought about through the 
exercise of man's free will, God foresaw that it would require 
severe restraints to check it, and in His fatherly goodness 
promptly imposed them. Indeed, the fact that God said, " Behold, 
they have become like us, to know good and evil, forbids the as- 
sumption that such knowledge is necessarily in itself a sin, but 
rather that it makes sin a possibility, and holiness as well. Sin is 
by the wrong use of faculties and susceptibilities, in themselves 
and in their normal exercise right. This was so in Eden, and 
must have been so with the angels that kept not their first estate. 
In no other way could transgression occur. It must have been 
through the disobedient and improper exercise of capabilities in- 
herently right and good, and of God. This is largely characteris- 
tic of all sin, though when once committed, it tends to perpetuate 
itself, and it may become a giant evil, and be perpetuated through 



76 SIN. 

eternity, but its first entrance is from the inexperience and imma- 
turity of virtue, and it Avill occur, if at all, in the instep of a moral 
economy. The sinner, once in the wrong, is out of harmony with 
God and with himself, gets into the habit and the toils of sin, and 
in many ways hedges up before himself the path of recovery to 
holiness. Much is possible and even liable, that is under no 
necessity of being, and that ought never to be. It does not. how- 
ever, excuse its actuality. The converse of all right is possible, 
and there is not a holy aspiration, or act of loving obedience and 
praise in the universe, without power to the contrary. Necessitate 
it, and you spoil it. Make it otherwise than the free act of a free 
mind, and freely rendered in the place of a possible alternative, 
and you quench the light and glory of a moral system, and annihi- 
late the characteristic distinction between the intellect of man or 
angel, and inert matter or brute force. Finite, derived intelli- 
gence, of any order, will begin at zero in development, for knowl- 
edge is an experience and a growth, and not a creation. This im 
plies no imperfection in God or His work, but is inherently of the 
nature of that which is finite and has a beginning. The liability 
of wrong in finite intelligence is actual and obvious, and has its 
truthful exponent in the fall of man ; but is conceivable as a con- 
crete reality only in beings whose existence begins — whose life 
is a growth in knowledge and experience — whose history is an 
accretion and a culture — a trial and a probation. They would 
eventually get beyond it, and be wise and too good to be under 
any actual liability of sin, as the angels who kept their first estate 
already are, and the spirits of the just made perfect, of our own 
race. They are so it is true, from a Divine providence, but that 
providence is no less a law ol mind than it is a Divine economy. 
The first man, then in himself comprising the race of whose 



SIN* 77 

future myriads, he was to become the father, enters upon his 
moral career by awaking to the perception of moral truth, or a 
perception of good and evil, just as his descendants first become 
conscious of moral distinctions. This original state of man, 
then, may, in reference to his moral history, be designated the in- 
fancy of the race. 

It is impossible for me to attempt to set forth in detail, the 
divine economy in the work of man's moral development. Look- 
ing back upon the sad experiences, the enormities and retributions 
recorded in the Bible concerning the early history of the race, we 
can see that they were for a purposed effect. They were exhibit- 
ing to the race, and forcing upon its recognition the necessitv for 
a system of divine and human law, — comprehensive, clear and 
immutable for the government of men, and also developing the 
principles upon which such law should rest. No one can care- 
fully read the history of the race down to the exodus from Egypt, 
without observing how crude and imperfect in those primitive 
times were men's moral ideas, the marked abstinence by the 
Almighty from enunciations of general laws and principles, and 
how low a standard of morality God was content to accept, and 
even to require. He seems to have treated mankind as immature 
and ignorant children, and when He imparted instruction, it re- 
lated only to particular cases ; as if a knowledge of abstract moral 
principles was as yet not to be expected of men. Having passed 
through the requisite preliminary training, the world was prepared 
for its next great step in its moral history, the revelation of the 
moral law, exhibiting with divine authority and completeness, the 
whole code of human obligation. This was the law given by 
Moses. It will be remarked, however, that the law thus given 
sought chiefly to regulate or suppress man's evil propensities by 



78 *SIN. 

prohibitions and commands, rather than to do so by imbuing the 
heart with spiritual affections, whose superior strength should 
supplant and prevent those tendencies to evil. Ages of experi- 
ence under it proved that neither the race as such, nor the indi- 
vidual man, could be brought up from a sinful state to holiness, 
could be redeemed, sanctified, and perfected, excerpt by means 
which the same mosaic revelation divinely foreshadowed, — the 
scheme of redemption and atonement typified in the Jewish sys- 
tem of sacrifices and ordinances. Thus the law was a school- 
master to bring the race to the Christian dispensation. The 
moving cause of creation was Divine love. God did not create 
the universe for His own sake, but because He desired the exist- 
ence of beings in His own image and likeness, whom He might 
make happy from Himself. Hence the ultimate divine purpose 
in creation is the formation of a heaven out of the human race* 
Thus earth, rightly considered, is the seminary of heaven — a place 
in which man begins to exist, and in which he may develop an 
angelic character to fit him for the higher uses, and the more ex- 
alted felicities of the eternal world. "In the fulness of time" 
therefore, was inaugurated the third great stage in man's moral 
advancement, by the advent of the promised Messiah, and the 
publication of His gospel. Christianity was the complement of 
Judaism. It followed up the work of moral discipline with that 
of atonement, justification and sanctification. It accepted what 
had been already accomplished, and pursued the labor still 
farther into the innermost chambers of the heart. 

The incarnation of Christ, which was "the eternal purpose 
which God purposed in Christ Jesus, our Lord," did not hinge 
upon the entrance of sin, was not an after-thought, a make-shift, 
an episode, a provisional economy to tide over a hidden reef. It 



SIN. 79 

was the preordained culmen of creation. In the first Adam all 
would have been unsafe. In the last Adam, " the council of 
Jehovah standeth forever." It belonged to the divine ideal of 
man, that he should inherit everlasting life. Such was the sig- 
nificance of the " tree of life " in the midst of the garden. When 
man shall have entered into the heavenly state he will not be in- 
dependent. Self-sufficiency belongs to God alone. It is a neces- 
sity of man's nature, that he should live, move, and have his being 
in God. His subsistence will be in the God Incarnate. "Christ 
ever liveth to make intercession for us" through His glorified 
humanity. Perfected man could not be severed from the Christ 
at any period of the coming eternity, without losing the life he has 
from Him. 

Our humanity is no longer in its infancy, and like a babe in 
" need of milk, instead of strong meat" which " belongeth to them 
that are of full age, even those who by reason of use, have their 
senses exercised to discern good and evil." Our race has entered 
into the period when its previous education has ripened, and truth 
begins to bring forth her perfect fruits. How great the harvest 
shall finally prove is known to the Infinite alone. The last great 
stage will be as was the beginning, conducted under His own 
personal supervision. Man, the perfect — or perfected — man in 
Christ Jesus, once more innocent, not then as at the first, from 
moral ignorance, but from a matured moral wisdom and strength — 
in God's image, not merely in a natural, but in a spiritual likeness 
also, will again walk with his maker. Creation was born in the 
evening. The first swing of the pendulum of the clock of time, 
marked the first instant of the evening. "The Evening and the 
Morning were the first Day." The same law holds good in the 
history of each individual man. His earliest beginnings in embryo 



80 SIN. 

are in darkness and the peril thereof. How long that evening is, 
when we attentively regard it ? Months and no senses ; then 
senses and months before any child can use them. Intellect lies 
like a landscape in the night. Then the dawnings of intelligence 
show mind more and more. 

The Bible follows nature on this same type. Its Day begins in 
the darkness of the original state of the universe, and emerges in 
the cosmos of an orderly physical, intellectual and moral world. 
It begins with man groping through the bye-ways of earth, and 
ends with man walking in the open golden streets of the New 
Jerusalem. It begins with the evening of Adam, and ends with 
the morning of Jesus. In that final heavenly Paradise, the descrip- 
tion of which closes the Bible, as that of the primal and earthly 
Eden commences it, it is proclaimed that " the Tabernacle of God 
shall be with men, and He Himself shall dwell with them, their 
God." Then " there shall be no sorrow, nor pain, nor crying, and 
no more curse," and man shall again "have right to the tree of 
life, which shall stand bv the river in the midst of the city," as of 
old " in the midst of the garden," for to "him that has overcome,'* 
the divine companionship — with freedom, rest and immortality, 
will be no longer incompatible with the knowledge of good and 
evil. 

The personal application of the doctrine of human depravity as 
I have presented it, is involved in the fact, that within each one of 
us there are two beings as it were, wrapt up in one — two natures, 
two characters, two principles, striving for the mastery. This truth, 
which is one of the profoundest mysteries of our nature, the Bible 
fully acknowledges. We see it in the dark struggle within the 
simple mind of the author of Ecclesiastes, and in the contention 
which is described between the regenerate and unregenerate man, 



SIA T . 8 1 

in the seventh chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. We 
see it, not only in the two-fold character of Jacob, but in that of 
David. We see it in the flux and reflux of the better mind of St. 
Peter, in the division of the mind of St. Paul. We see it in the 
long history of Christendom — the mixture of the hypocrite and the 
saint — the union of the coward and the hero, the fool lurking in 
the innermost mind of the wisest, the filthy thought ensconcing 
itself in the crystal heart of the purest. We see it in the old theo- 
logical Adam striving to maintain his own against the new Chris- 
tian spiritual Adam. We all, in our day, pass through the same 
experience as the primeval father. As innocent merry children, we 
walk blithely by our parent's side, the butterflies of humanity, sip- 
ping each innocent pleasure. But before a score of years have 
passed over our heads, we eat of the fruit of knowledge, and ex- 
perience disappointment, shame, and remorse. Before we reach 
maturity we learn much, but innocence and purity are the fee we 
pay for our schooling. We fall as naturally as our first parents 
fell, let us strive to rise with the ripe fruits of experience. We 
purchase knowledge, let us use it to limit our labors to lasting 
gains. Then Adam's example shall have worked its mission, 
when, men created a little lower than the angels, at length shall 
equal them. 



THE INCARNATION, 



On the Dissertation of the nature and attributes of God, we 
found that the terms used to explain the doctrine of the Trinity 
were so conceived in the metaphysics of a by-gone age, that nine 
out of ten persons of the present age could not understand them 
The heart remained untouched, realizing nothing but the sense of 
its own emptiness. But did we therefore come to the conclusion 
that the doctrine of the Trinity was itself in every sense a mere 
figment of theology ? I think not. On the contrary we found that 
this doctrine had something in it at the bottom, which was truth, 
if only that fundamental truth could be presented to the human 
mind in such a form that the mind could receive it. In view of 
this necessity for re-statement, I proceeded to point out with re- 
ference to the Trinity a way, aside from any metaphysical hypoth- 
esis, in which the doctrine can be explained on what I may call 
a practical or experimental basis. Having done so, I now pro- 
ceed to discuss the great doctrine of the Incarnation from a simi- 
lar point of view and in the same practical manner, premising 
that as the doctrine is so interwoven with other doctrines, and I 
have so much to say about it in connection with them that I will 
have little to say about it apart. 



THE INCARNATION. 83 

The doctrine of the Incarnation is the„great central truth of our 
holy faith ; but it is a mystery- of which we should speak only in 
accents of humility and reverence. I wish to remind you of the 
manifestations of growth and development in the Divine economy, 
and to the evidences that God has an orderly and progressive 
place in all His works which existed in the mind of God before 
the world was. When He made man He designed him to become 
an inhabitant of heaven, and His providence has ever been work- 
ing to that gracious end. God created all things because he is in- 
finite love, and therefore desires the existence of beings whom He 
could make happy from Himself. He created man because His 
infinite love desired the existence of intelligent beings who could 
love Him through their own volition in return. All God's provi- 
dence has been the outworking of his infinite love. It has had 
this one object, to lead man to the knowledge and love of God. 

Man by nature was endowed with reason and intellect, with a 
mind and with a soul. He had the power to hold converse with 
God ; but this intercourse was held only at a distance, there was 
yet no spiritual communion. Nothing which could strictly be 
called a union between the creature and the Creator. But from 
the beginning it was the intention that such a union should one 
day exist, for we are told, " Known unto God are all his works 
from the beginning," and that union exists now, and will exist 
through all eternity. Need I say what that connecting link was 
to be, whereby God designed to bind man to Himself? What 
that bond of 'union is? It is that mystery which "from the 
beginning of the world had been hid in God," and which at 
the great day of the Annunciation was revealed to Mary by the 
Angel Gabriel ; " Hail thou that art highly favored, the Lord is 
with thee, blessed art thou among women." '' The Word was 



84 THE INCARNA TION. 

made flesh," and there was thenceforth a " mediator between God 
and man, the man Christ Jesus." The Incarnation was the comple- 
ment of creation and a more complete manifestation of the love 
and wisdom of God than even Revelation and Providence. It 
involved and provided for a spiritual creation without which the 
purpose of the first would not have been realized. This aspect 
of the Incarnation, to wit : That it was designed from the 
first "in the fullness of time to gather together all things 
in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even 
in Him ;" this aspect of the coming of our blessed Lord in the 
flesh seems most in harmony with many passages of Holy 
Scripture which otherwise would be exceedingly difficult of ex- 
planation. Thus St. Paul speaks of the " eternal purpose which 
God purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." And St. Peter tells us 
that Christ was " foreordained before the foundations of the 
world." This view also would seem more in accordance and 
harmony with what we are taught in Holy Scripture, concerning 
the nature and attributes of God, than if we were to regard the 
Incarnation as a supplementary plan, as it were forced upon God 
as a remedy for man's wilfulness in sinning. 

All life and power emanate from God as a perpetual and con- 
stant cause. The creation of the material universe, or ot human 
beings is not a fiat, the effect of a spoken word. They are a 
perpetual emanation — a birth, a flowing forth. The universe was 
not once created and assigned over to the keeping of certain laws 
and then essentially disconnected from its Creator. The cause 
perpetually operates. Material bodies have no more power in 
themselves to maintain their form than they had to create it. We 
know this from our own observation. All power of existence 
and action is God's power in us. " In Him we live, and move, 



THE INCARNATION. 85 

and have our being." Our life comes from God relatively the 
same as light and heat from the sun. They are not once created 
and then remain. They are continual^ created. If the sun were 
destroyed, the light that is now in the universe would not remain 
in it ; and all the planets would not only be involved in darkness 
but would perish. In the same way all spiritual and natural life 
is a continual gift from God. Man is an organic form, created 
by God to receive life from Him, and to be made happy by its recep- 
tion. If you will lay aside all theories and doctrines for a moment, 
and look at the material body as it is, you will see that it is an 
organic form, fitted to be operated upon by the soul within and 
the material world without, to receive life from God through them, 
in various ways and degrees. It has no life which it does not 
continually receive. The moment the light ceases to flow into 
the eye, all power of seeing is lost. The sound dies away in 
the ear when the air ceases to vibrate and fall upon it. In the 
same way the soul, which is a spiritual organism, has no life in 
itself, and receives it as an overflowing gift from God. Now if 
God be a being of infinite love and wisdom, and made man to be 
a recipient of His life, how could He fail to adapt that life to him 
in all states, the lowest as well as the highest ? Both Scripture 
and Reason declare that God assumed a human nature, because 
His relations to man were such that He could in no other way 
carry out His gracious purpose of preparing Him for heaven. 

Step by step God had been raising the race up and training it 
for its ultimate destiny. He had already given the moral law but 
now the law was to be written in the heart. Man was to be con- 
trolled no longer by prohibitions and commands but by spiritual 
affections, and to reach him it became necessary that God should 
adapt Himself to man's state, not from any lack of power in God 



86 THE INCARNATION. 

to give, but in us to receive. You cannot instruct or guide a 
blind man b)' the eye or gesture. You cannot teach a deaf man 
by sound, you cannot warn him of any danger or direct him to 
any good by voice. You can only control and guide him by the 
sense of touch. You must come close to him ; you must take him 
by the hand and lead him. Now if man were spiritually blind 
and deaf, how could God help him in any other way than by com- 
ing to him in a form adapted to his state ? To say that God is 
omnipotent does not remove the difficulty. It is not the want of 
sufficient power but of power adapted to the end for which it is 
to bs exerted. The whole subject is capable of illustration b3' 
many things in nature and in human life. It is a well-known 
fact, that it is intensely cold on the top of high mountains, 
and that the cold increases as we ascend. The reason is not that 
there is less heat, or less of those activities which cause heat, 
whatever they maybe, but it is owing to the rarity of the atmos- 
phere. The calorific element is so subtle, that it must be clothed 
with a denser medium like the atmosphere, and the atmosphere 
itself must be dense as it is near the surface of the earth, before it 
can sensibly affect the human body, or other material objects. 
Unless the pure element of heat were so clothed with a grosser 
form the earth would be desolate and bare of all vegetable and 
animal life, through revolving in the ocean of pure Solar fire and 
light. Now suppose this to be the state of the earth, and the 
question arises how can it be made habitable for plant, animal, 
and man? Must the sun give forth an intenser heat and a more 
brilliant light? No. It must clothe its heat which is the life of 
all material things, in a grosser element ; it must come down from 
its essential purity, and adapt itself to the nature of the objects it 
desires to act upon. Is it not so ? In the same analogous man- 



THE INCARNATION. 87 

ner God, by the Incarnation, veiled the brightness of His glory in 
a material form that He might adapt it to the end He desired to ac- 
complish. When Moses came down fiom Mount Sinai his face shone 
with such brightness that the Israelites could not bear to look upon 
it. We can hardly glance at the unveiled glory of the Sun. How 
then could He approach us, but through a mediator who is light 
itself ; whose intense splendors outshine the Sun farther than the 
Sun outshines the faintest spark of the glow worm ! Truly God 
out of Christ would be a consuming fire. A medium or a 
mediator was necessary, a bridge to span the gulf between man 
and God, and that medium must be a human nature in its most 
sensuous and material forms, on the other side. Such a nature 
Jehovah assumed and by means of it, established a direct com- 
munication between Himself and man, and brought His saving, 
life-giving power to bear upon him. Such briefly, were the real 
relations of man to God and out of them grew the necessity for 
the Incarnation. Man was like a branch severed from a vine, or 
united to it only by a mere external, by some filaments of bark r 
as it were. By the assumption of a human nature, God formed a 
medium by which the connection between the branch and the true 
vine could be secured ; by which the branch could abide in the 
vine and the vine in the branch, and the vital forces of the root 
and trunk could flow into the branch, purge it at its death, its 
sins, and cause it to bring forth more fruit. 

Some people find a difficulty in accepting fully the doctrine that 
lt God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" thinking 
that it would seem to limit and restrictthe Divine Being to a mere 
bodily presence and space. But any such supposition can only 
arise in the minds of those who have a very imperfect conception 
of the omnipotence of God. We are not to believe that the human 



88 THE INCARNATION. 

body of our Lord contained in its own limits all the fullness of the 
Godhead, while it retained any of the finite and imperfect nature 
of the mother. For although it is true that the union of the God- 
head with the manhood in the person of Christ, was initiated at 
His conception in the Womb of the Virgin Mother ; so that from 
the first, Christ was very God as well as very man, yet we are 
taught that the humanity assumed had to be renewed, sanctified 
and perfected through trials and sufferings until, having passed 
through the gates of death, it became finally fully assimilated to 
the Divine Nature, and was, in the "fullness of the Godhead," 
the recipient of all power in heaven and on earth. Thus may we 
believe in regard to the Incarnation, that a spiritual emanation of 
the Divine Substance — to use our Lord's words, " proceeded forth 
from God." " God of God, Light of Light, True God of True 
God," as the quaint language of the Nicene Creed, well and tersely 
explains this truth. Or to quote Tertullian, "Thus did Spirit 
constitute another of Spirit — God another of God, not in point of 
numberbut of form. That Ray of God having entered into a virgin 
and made itself flesh in her womb, was born as a man united with 
God." He was subject to all the laws that every human being 
is subject to. He learned truth as every child learns it. "And Jesus 
increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." 
He violated no laws of physical or mental growth. Every step 
from His conception to His resurrection, was ordered by infinite 
wisdom, and taken with direct reference to its bearings upon the 
great work of the Redemption. He was always " about His father's 
business." The assumed nature was always controlled and 
directed in every particular in the best way to make it a perfect 
medium of accomplishing the Divine Purposes of love to man ; 
to prepare it to become the perfect mediator between God and man. 



THE INCARNATION. 89 

"The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father," did not, so to speak, 
leave His heavenly throne, He did not change his character as " the 
Prince of Peace." He was the same ever loving and all Wise 
Being, but he placed Himself, by the Incarnation, in a new rela- 
tionship to man. He came down to our conditions to make us 
partakers of His Divine life. " God in Christ " passed through all 
the stages of human existence, from infancy to manhood, that He 
might sanctify and become an energizing principle to them all. 

I have before expressed my opinion very emphatically concern- 
ing the dogmatic theology of the day. It is a very complicated 
fabric, the growth of ages not always enlightened, and is therefore 
involved in many incongruous statements and definitions difficult 
to explain or harmonize satisfactorily, and this is particularly the 
case with what it teaches in regard to the divinity of our blessed 
Lord. I would be the last to reject revelation on account of its mys- 
teries, but it is folly to prefer the mystery to the sunlight. Keep- 
ing in mind our Lord's dual nature — Divine and human — it is easy 
to understand those texts of Scripture in which, when speaking of 
Himself, He makes use of words containing ideas of different per- 
sonality, without resorting for explanation to the gross and com- 
plex tritheistic sophistries of the schoolmen. One may well be 
amazed at the boundless arrogance, the haughty, awful impudence 
of the thing, that man should dare to say on so august a subject so 
much more than God has been pleased to reveal — that he should 
presume to formulate an analysis of the inmost nature of Deity, 
and demand assent to it under penalty of anathema. I 
need not recount the numerous instances in which our Lord 
speaks of the union existing between Himself and the Father, but 
you remember His sweetly sad conversation with His disciples, 
just previous to His betrayal, as described by St. John. On that 



9° THE INCARNATION. 

solemn occasion, when the Redeemer seemed so willing to unbosom 
all His secrets to His disciples, notwithstanding all the revelations 
He then, and had previously, made to them concerning Him- 
self, He nevertheless, with marked emphasis, said to His disciples, 
" I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now." What those things were which were withheld from dis- 
closure, on account of the inability of His auditors to properly 
receive, we cannot know. They may have been, and probably 
were, some fuller revelations about Himself." In answer to 
Philip's request, "Lord, show us the Father," Jesus had an- 
swered, " Have I been so long time with you and yet hast 
thou not known me, Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." Possibly, could the full truth have seized His disciples 
that He, whom they had so long known as the carpenter of Naza- 
reth, was indeed the great God : that seated by Him, pondering 
over the strange words He spoke, they were in the immediate 
presence of the embodied Jehovah, it would have been impossible 
to have borne up against the overpowering thought. The entire 
realization of that great truth was to grow upon them, as the Spirit 
should bring one thing after another to their remembrance and 
reveal to them their full import. It is certain, however, that not- 
withstanding all the proofs that our Divine Redeemer had submit- 
ted to them in that direction, His disciples yet comprehended His 
divinity but imperfectly ; and may it not be that the Church to-day, 
in regard to the full comprehension of our Lord's divinity, is still 
feeding on " milk " instead of that " strong meat" that belongeth 
to them that are of full age ! " 

There has always been a great diversity of opinion as to what 
was the object of the Incarnation and who was incarnated, and 
thousands of books have been written to explain these points. The 



THE INCARNATION. 91 

idea of debt seems to be such ahapp)' solution of the whole question 
that many persons have accepted it as an illustration of the relation 
of man to God. By Sin man had incurred a debt which he could 
never pay. He had sinned against the infinite Being and had 
thereby incurred an infinite debt, and he was about to be cast into 
the great prison-house of the universe, with no hope of release 
until he had paid the utmost farthing. At this critical juncture the 
Son of God, the Second Person in the Trinity steps in as a Saviour, 
and says, " I will pay the debt ; you demand an infinite price and 
I will pay it," and he gives Himself. He becomes incarnated and 
suffers all that the whole world of sinners would have suffered, 
and thus He purchases their pardon. Now God can freely forgive 
them, since the demands of His justice are satisfied. It is 
difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile such a theory with 
the Divine Unit)-. Two distinct beings are necessarily implied — 
beings of quite different, if not opposite characters. If they are 
the same and have the same character, the Son ought to demand 
justice as well as the Father. If the justice of the one demands 
satisfaction, why does not the justice of the other also ? Again, 
according to this theory, the being called Jehovah in the Old Tes- 
tament, did not come into the world — He sent His Son. It was 
the Second Person in the Trinity who came, and who is the 
Saviour and Redeemer. But this is directly contrary to the most 
explicit and oft-repeated declarations of Scripture. It is much to be 
regretted that theological terms are used, which distract the mind 
from the simple verities of the Gospel, deprive it of any distinct 
object of worship, and pervert language to a signification quite 
different from the scriptures, and which never entered into the 
minds of the early Fathers of the Church. Tertullian, one of the 
earliest Christian writers very aptly says : Difference and number 



92 THE INCARNATION. 

are not in God, so far as He is conceived of in His eternal, immov- 
able being, but merely so far as He is regarded in motion. When 
a ray proceeds from the sun, it is a part of the whole, but the sun 
will be in the ray, for the ray is a ray of the sun and does not 
break loose from the substance thereof, but merely dilates itself." 

" The first of all the commandments is, the Lord our God is our 
Lord." " Hear O Israel Jehovah, our God is one Jehovah." " I 
am Jehovah, and there is none else; there is no God beside Me." 
" Who is God save Jehovah, or who is a rock save our God ?" "I 
am Jehovah, and besides me there is no Saviour, I am Jehovah thy 
God ; there is no Saviour besides me." " I Jehovah, am thy Sa- 
viour and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." These are 
only a few passages of the same import. Language cannot affirm 
a truth in plainer and more forcible terms than is affirmed in these 
passages, that the Being called Jehovah is the only Saviour, that 
there is none beside Him. In other places, as if to avoid all pos- 
sible grounds for mistake, Jehovah is declared to be the person 
who was to come, and who did come to save men. " And it shall 
be said in that day : Lo this is our God ; we have waited for Him, 
and he will save us. This is Jehovah : we have waited for Him ; 
we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." "The voice of Him 
that crieth in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make 
straight in the desert a high way for our God. And the glory of 
Jehovah shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. Be- 
hold the Lord Jehovah shall come with a strong hand, and His 
arm shall rule for Him." "Jehovah shall go forth and fight against 
those nations, and His feet shall stand in that day, upon the Mount 
of Olives, which is before Jerusalem." 

In other places the Saviour is called Jehovah our Righteousness, 
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Alpha and the Omega, 



THE INCARNATION. 93 

the Beginning and the Ending, who is, and who was, and who is 
to come, the Almighty, To the question then who came into the 
world ? who was incarnated ? The Bible answers — Jehovah — the 
only God of Heaven and earth. Jehovah Himself came into the 
world moved by His own infinite love, and in the way pro- 
vided by His infinite wisdom. His human nature was begotten by 
His Divine nature and therefore they bear the relation of Father 
and Son; as it is written: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon 
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee ; there- 
fore also that hoty thing which shall be born of thee shall be called 
the Son of God." 

But think for a moment of the light in which the popular theory 
in regard to the Mission of the Messiah of which I have spoken, 
represents the Divine character. According to it, God demands so 
much suffering for so much sin. It is no matter who suffers so 
that the exact amount is inflicted. The law on the contrary is: 
" The soul that sinneth it shall die." In all offences against Govern- 
ment civil or moral, the debtor must pay the debt. The relation is 
not one of contract according to which, one party is paid an equiv- 
alent for some good, or receives damages for some loss. The law not 
only requires the penalty, but the whole force and intent of the law 
is evaded, unless the one who breaks the law pays the penalty ; 
God's justice is not therefore eminently set forth in the way 
commonly represented. But on the contrary, it makes Him the 
most unjust Being in the universe. It represents Him as violating 
the first principle of justice in His efforts to obtain it — of violating 
His own law for the purpose of maintaining its sanctions. In the 
parable of the Prodigal Son, our Lord has given us a perfect pic- 
ture of His relations to the sinner. The " certain man " represents 
God ; the younger son, the sinner. See how entirely opposite the 



94 THE INCARNATION. 

whole spirit and scope of the common doctrine of the mission of 
our Lord is to the plain meaning of this parable. If the popular 
theory were true, the Father ought to stand aloof from his repen- 
tant son ; He ought to demand compensation for his wasted estate; 
He ought to visit him with condign punishment for his ingratitude 
and sins, and refuse to see him until some one had given him full 
satisfaction. The elder son, who was indignant because his father 
would heap blessings upon the young prodigal who had wasted 
his father's living with harlots, was a more correct representation 
of God according to the common theory, than the father. But how 
different is the actual fact ! The paternal heart overflowing with 
love and pity for his lost son, yearns to embrace him. He does 
not wait for satisfaction ; it is satisfaction enough that he has 
seen the error of his ways, and is willing to come back. He does 
not hesitate for fear that all paternal authority will be destroyed if 
he forgive him. No. "When he was yet a great way off", his 
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck 
and kissed him." He vould not listen to his erring but penitent 
son's request, to be made as one of his hired servants. His reply 
was, " Bring forth the best robe and put it on him ; and put a ring 
on his hand and shoes on his feet ; and bring hither the fatted calf, 
and kill it, and let us eat and be merry ; for this my son 
was dead and is alive again ; he was lost and is found." 
Our Lord teaches us the same truth in other parables. Indeed 
He seems to exhaust every method of expressing His love for us, 
and of showing us how ready He is to forgive and bless us, if we 
will only permit Him to do it. He does what He commands us 
to do. " Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your 
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, 



THE INCARNATION. 95 

and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you ; 
tJiat ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven ; for 
He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Time would fail 
me to quote the passages in which He plainly declares that He 
came to reveal divine truth to men, to bring the divine 
life down to them, and to open their eyes to see it. He 
says nothing about satisfaction, about the pa)^ment of debt. He \§ 
the Good Shepherd, the Great Physician, the Perfect Teacher, the 
Faithful Exemplar in ever}- work. The Scriptures plainly teach that 
Jehovah, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, assumed human 
guise as the Prince of Peace to make us at one with Him, and to 
reconcile the world to Himself. He finds His children blind, 
naked, starved, in prison, diseased, dying — He opens their eyes ; 
He clothes them ; as the Good Shepherd He feeds them with His 
own flesh and blood — His love and truth ; as the Almighty Saviour 
He throws open the prison doors and looses them from the fetters 
of sin ; as the Great Physician He heals their diseases ; the only 
Source of Life, He gives them life. As the Captain of our Salva- 
tion, He trod our path, He tasted our cup, He laid down His life 
that He might help us to lay down ours ; He took it again that He 
might assist us in regaining ours. Could infinite love do less ? 
Could infinite power do more ? For the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, the Church had to maintain a fight which was protracted 
through many centuries. We in these last days may be shocked at 
the presumption of the theologians of those days in venturing with 
their logic into the mysterious depths of the Divine Nature, and 
for endeavoring to frame definitions when they ought to have fallen 
prostrate in adoration. But after all, in the metaphysics — the un- 
intelligible metaphysics if you will — which framed so large a por- 



96 THE INCARNATION. 

tion of the theology of the early church and which is perpetuated 
in the ancient creeds, let us believe that the real and ultimate strife 
was not so much for a theory of the Divine Nature, but for that 
perfect faith in God's love for us, which the truth of the Incarna- 
tion inspires, and of which it is the sure and enduring defence. 

There are aspects of nature which sometimes make it difficult to 
realize that there can be any real communion between the Creator 
and ourselves. Those of us who live in great cities are perhaps 
especially sensitive to the austere influences of the material uni- 
verse. Its vastness — its grandeur sometimes oppress us — resting on 
some lofty eminence with the foundations of the granite mountains 
beneath us, and their jagged peaks rising into the clouds above, or 
standing on the shore of some desolate sea, unwhitened by a soli- 
tary sail, or lifting our eyes to the heavens at night, knowing what 
our forefathers did not know about the immense magnitude of the 
stars — about their number — and about the enormous distances 
which separate them from each other and from us — we are crushed 
by the sense of our insignificance. If we perish, what difference 
would it make in the stupendous universe ? The mountains would 
stand firm — the tides would continue to ebb and flow — the stars 
would rise and set — the bracken would still turn brown on the hill- 
side in autumn, and the wild-flower would fill the plain with 
beauty in the spring, the shining brooks would continue to make 
their pleasant music just as before. David went to look at the 
shining heavens, and asked, " What is man that Thou art mindful of 
him, and the Son of Man that Thou visitest him ? " Nature came be- 
tween him and God, until nature was transfigured by the power of a 
victorious faith, and then the heavens became the symbol of a di- 
viner glory, and the deeps the echo of a mightier voice, and the 
wealth of celestial harvests the expression of celestial love. But 



THE INCARNATION. 97 

through the Incarnation we have received a richer and fuller revela- 
tion than that which was the strength of David's faith, and which 
was vouchsafed to the Jewish race — a revelation anticipating, and 
perhaps augmenting as well as anticipating, the moral conditions 
of a more complex civilization and a more varied intellectual life. 
For if in these Christian times, the light is more intense than it was, 
the shadows too are deeper. We have a fuller and richer revela- 
tion because Christ Jesus the Eternal Word, the Brightness of His 
Father's glory and the express image of His Person was made flesh 
and dwelt among men. 

The deep desire of every earnest soul is to know God — " Show us 
the Father and it sufficeth us." And to the soul so yearning to know 
God, the Saviour answers as He answered Philip — "Have I been 
so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? " 
The attempt to- think of God as He is in the infinite abyss of His 
own absolute nature, must ever be futile. The mind becomes con- 
fused in the effort to soar so far above the necessary limitations of 
human thought. But in Jesus — " God manifest in the flesh," ever 
present by His life-giving Spirit, we have a revelation suited to our 
wants. God in Christ is so brought down to our spiritual state 
that He can be a subject of rational thought and an object of ra- 
tional love. "There is one God and one Mediator between God 
and Man, the Man, Christ Jesus." By the Incarnation and glorifi- 
cation of the human nature, God enabled Himself to operate on 
human minds and hearts in a way in which He did not previously 
operate. The communication to man of the Divine operative 
power of " God in Christ," the gift of the Holy Spirit proceed- 
ing from the Father and the Son fore-ordained from eternity, was 
the grand universal and certain result of the birth and glorification 
of Jesus Christ. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



I have endeavored to controvert some of the popular fallacies in 
regard to the great event which occurred in the garden of Eden — 
an event which, whatever ground there may be for difference as to 
the previous character and position of our first parents, or the 
precise nature of the change that was effected jy it upon them, it 
is indisputable that it occasioned in some way or other, the most 
remarkable and important revolution that humanity has ever un- 
dergone. By it was wrought that momentous change that altered 
at once, the personal relation of man to his maker, and fixed the 
future destinies of the whole human race. 

By it, it resulted that sin came into the world, " and death by 
sin." Sin — a mystery into which we can go no further than to 
say, that freedom of will in a created being seems to involve the 
possibility of sin. Difficult to understand, yet, the sad fact re- 
mains, that sin exists in the world, and I now purpose to speak 
of the divine method of salvation from its ravages, commonly 
called the atonement. 

Anybody familiar with the writings of the apostolic fathers, 
could point out a peculiarity in them, both Greek and Latin, which 
at first might cause a little surprise. It is this — that they seem to 



THE A TO X EM EN T. 99 

have had, comparatively speaking, very little definite theory about 
the atonement, beyond the fact that it was in some way a sacrifice 
for sin. They treated the subject in general terms, without ap- 
pearing to care to enter into any detailed examination of 
it. They speak of the death of Christ, devotionally, rather 
than theologically, and in the language of Scripture, rather 
than in dogmatic terms. The patristic view looks mainly to the 
effect of Christ's sacrifice on us ; whereas modern theology, chiefly 
to its effect upon God. The early fathers did not teach, as Luther 
and others have since, that the sacrifice of our Blessed Lord, was 
to supersede our imperfect satisfaction ; but to give strength and 
value to man's efforts and strivings, which, in themselves, they 
should not have. Thus St. Athanasius quaintly says in illustra- 
tion of this view: — " As when a great being enters some large city, 
and takes up his abode in one of the houses, much honor thereby 
accrues to the whole city, and no enemy or plunderer dares to 
assault it, because of the being who resides in one of the houses ; 
even so with the King of Kings ; He entered our own province 
of humanity, and took up His residence in one of its kindred 
bodies, and forth vith every machination of mankind's enemy was 
arrested, and so death's power of corruption, which heretofore 
had prevailed over men, was abolished — for all the human race 
would have perished, had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son 
of God, intervened to put an end to death." To the saints of old 
it was the Incarnation which was the centre of christian faith, as of 
christian life. Instead of looking upon the death of Our Blessed 
Lord on the cross, as an isolated act, or even an isolated sacrifice, 
as the popular theology of modern times views it ; they regarded 
it as the consummation of the self-devotion and sacrifice compre- 
hended by our Lord's entire life on earth. The death of Christ is 



*oo THE ATONEMENT. 

not to be looked upon apart from His life. He was " the Christ," 
the Anointed One — our great High-priest, anointed for His priest- 
hood in His mother's womb. He was our High- priest throughout 
His earthly life. He is our high-priest still in heaven, and through 
all eternity will ever live to make intercession for us, and sustain 
us by the life-giving properties of His glorified humanity. And 
so in speaking of our redemption, the holy gospels do not dwell 
exclusively upon the death of Christ, but exhibit the facts and the 
words of His earthly ministry. For instance, we read : — " For 
this cause the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy 
the works of the devil." Here it is rather His life than His death 
to which is referred. Yes, by His victory over the tempter; by 
His miracles of mercy ; by His perfect obedience ; by His pure 
teachings ; by the calling of the apostles ; by the institution of 
His church, as well as by His crowning act of self-devotion on 
Calvary, He broke the power of sin. 

Again, when He says of himself: "I am come that they may 
have lite, and that they may have it more abundantly," He speaks 
not so much of the forgiveness of sin as of the engrafting on our 
human nature a new principle of life through union with Him. 
God might have lived for Himself, but He laid this among the 
fundamentals : nothing must exist for itself alone. He is now 
living for others constantly. He wrought that principle in every 
atom of matter. He enforced it in all the physical forces. He 
adopted it for his own rule of working, and as the basis of His 
kingdom in the hearts of men. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, 
and thy neighbor as thyself" is our Lord's summary of the com- 
mandments, and thus the fulfilment of the law is to be found in 
the principle of self-sacrifice. 



THE A TONEMENT. I o i 

Now the self-sacrifice of our Lord began by His emptying Him- 
self of His glory and taking upon Himself the form of a servant. 
It continued through His whole life of suffering till the stone was 
rolled to the mouth of the tomb wherein His body was laid. It 
was exhibited in the spotless purity of His life as man on earth, 
and it was crowned by His endurance of death upon the cross. 
The orbs of heaven shine not for themselves, but give forth their 
light and their warmth. The flowers of earth bloom not for them- 
selves, but yield their beauty and their fragrance. And He who 
made heaven and earth, the great law-giver Himself, conforms to 
this universal law of sacrifice. We shrink from sacrifice and we 
are drawn towards it. It is at once so difficult and so consolatory. 
Have you ever looked intently upon the moon when it has not 
been full ? Have you seen a part shining brightly while the rest 
was shrouded and almost quite dark ? So it is with many spiritual 
truths which are perplexing and difficult — they have a dark side 
and a bright one. So it is with this great doctrine of sacrifice in 
its various phases. Very difficult is it to think of — this suffering 
which has always been in the world, this constant death and sacri- 
fice in a thousand shapes. Look back, for instance, long before 
the advent of man to this earth ; look back and see those mighty 
lizards tearing each other to pieces in the slimy mud and primeval 
marshes of the early world. We know that they did so, because 
we find these creatures inside each other's skeletons ; we know 
that they must have lived upon each other, must have destroyed 
and devoured each other. We dig up their remains constantly in 
the fossil state, dreadful witnesses to this fearful and dark law of 
sacrifice — vicarious sacrifice ; one creature sacrificed to keep an- 
other alive. And around us at this hour the same spectacle is 
going on ; we see the poor feeble animal falling a prey to the 



102 THE A TONEMENT. 

stronger one, and even man himself preys not only on the 
lower animals, but he preys upon his fellow-men. I am not 
alluding to cannibalism, but I am speaking in a larger sense 
of the way in which human beings are not only sacrificed to 
the cupidity and deceitfulness of others, but to the wants and ne- 
cessities of others. You and I every day have a share in this. 
We cannot help it, the law of sacrifice is so intimately interwoven 
with our civilization. We are so constituted in the body politic 
that we cannot help other people involuntarily suffering for our 
benefit, and dying for us by what looks like a blind, pitiless law 
which they do not acquiesce in. 

But there is voluntary sacrifice as well as involuntary sacrifice, 
and the moment sacrifice becomes voluntary, the dark law be- 
comes eradicated ; we may not even then see very far, but we see 
a little way. Tell me, you who think that the doctrine of vicarious 
suffering is a doctrine without sense, and without reason, without 
moral dignity or justice, what do you make of all that high impulse 
which is in the world, which is in your own hearts ; all that great 
willingness to suffer and to sacrifice yourselves for others? How 
is it that human society holds together at all ? Is it not because 
the good are willing to suffer for the bad ? Because they bear in 
their bodies, for the sake of the unthankful and the evil, the marks 
of the Lord Jesus ; because every high and pure and regenerating 
influence which is now upon earth, or ever has been in the world, 
has been under the law of vicarious suffering and sacrifice, by 
which the good come and stand between and prevent the guilty 
from bearing the full punishment or consequences of their sins. 
Yes ; and we must believe that in some inscrutable way this power 
of going forth, and giving one's self for others, entering into their 
sorrows and trials, becoming as one of them, in order to bear their 



THE ATONEMENT. 1 03 

sorrows, belongs to God. We may not be able to put our thoughts 
into formularies, but it may be a living thought for all that. Crea- 
tion is itself a kind of sacrifice, a coming forth of God, a giving of 
Himself to others, that they might have life, and have it more abun- 
dantly. And, still further, the preservation of man, or the contin- 
uous outflow of life-power from God, is sacrifice. But in regard to 
the sacrifice of Jesus Christ do not be superstitious. Do not think 
that the fact of pain is pleasing to God. This is one disastrous 
view of the atonement, which has made atonement, in one sense 
of the word, so incomprehensible, because it has been represented 
that God took a certain satisfaction in the actual pain and torment 
of the holy righteous and just One, which is impossible. It is one 
thing to be pleased when you see a noble creature put himself in 
the place of another, and receive pain for him ; it is quite another 
thing to take a holy, just and righteous person, and wreak the 
vengeance upon him which justly belongs, not to him, but to the 
offender. Yet this is the way in which the atonement has been 
sometimes brought before us ; as if there were some kind of neces- 
sity for vengeance somewhere ; as if it did not matter where it 
fell, so that if it fell upon the just, God was as well satisfied as if 
it had fallen upon the unjust. It is true we are satisfied when we 
see the innocent suffering for the guilty, but not in the sense in 
which God has been represented as satisfied with Christ's suffer- 
ings. When a man who is a good man builds a reformatory, and 
deprives himself of his money, we are satisfied; we say he has 
taken upon himself to bear the sins of the guilty. When one who 
loves another puts himself between that other and the conse- 
quences of his frailty, and takes the responsibility of actions 
which are not his own, and suffers because he loves his brother, 
his sister, we are satisfied ; but it is not because a man has suf- 



104 THE ATONEMENT. 

fered so much pain, but because he has had that nobility of feeling 
to sa)' to another, " I will put myself in your place, I will under- 
take for you." So it is with God. It is not that God arbitrarily 
smites the innocent for the guilty; but it is just this: there are 
certain moral laws in this world, which are designed for the well- 
being of the world, which are best for a man to live under, which are 
absolutely necessary, which are not to be twisted, but which must 
be conformed to, under penalty — natural, inevitable penalty ; and 
those who do not understand, or will not understand and keep 
those laws, break them, and suffer the consequences ; then it is 
lawful for one who does understand and obey them, to come to the 
help of the disobedient, and step in and save them from the con- 
sequences of their actions. Then you say the deliverer is smitten 
by God. Why, of course He is smitten by God in this sense, that 
the law remains which God has made good everywhere for every- 
body. He obeys it willingly, where the other has broken it; He 
comes into the collision in the breach, and is smitten. God has 
not taken a spear and pierced Him. God did not stretch Him 
on the cross ; God did not slav Him arbitrarily for another's 
sins. He has stepped in — that is all — stepped into the place ot 
suffering, and suffered vicariously. That is just what you do 
when you go among the vile and degraded, and the better you 
are the more you will suffer from the results of their unclean 
and filthy and wretched lives. You will suffer for their sakes. 
Certainly ; but not in that sense in which He has been said to 
seize on an innocent, though willing, victim, and punish him 
for the guilty, and then retire with a sort of glutted frenzy, or, 
as theologians say, " satisfied justice." Justice ! What kind of 
justice would that be? "Ah ! but," we are told, "you know this 
is a violent proceeding on the part of the Creator from our point 



THE A TONEMENT. 105 

of view, ot course, but then the Creator's justice is of a different 
kind from ours ! " I should think it was ; of a very different 
kind indeed — so different a kind as to be called properly by the 
very opposite name. Tell me not God's justice is one thing, 
and man's another. If God's love is not the same as man's, then 
the word " love " has no meaning as applied to God. Divine 
justice is on an immensely larger scale, but it must be of the 
same description or character, different only in altitude and 
quantity, but not in quality ; and if it is not of the same kind 
then the word justice has no meaning at all, and it is of no use 
to talk any more about Divine love and justice. Tell me it is 
of the same kind as mine, and I understand, but do not describe 
to me a horrible human crime, and call it Divine justice ! "The 
soul that sinneth it shall die,'' is the irrevocable decree of eter- 
nal justice ; not that some sinless being shall die for, or in the 
place of, the sinning soul, and his righteousness be imputed to 
the guilty. Everywhere does the Bible teach that man's union or 
spiritual at-one-ment with God — which is salvation — is wrought 
solely by a change in his own moral character. " For," as the 
holy apostle says, " if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die, but if 
ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." 
We must be changed before the reconciliation can be effectual to 
us. We must be born again. We must be renewed in the spirit 
and temper of our minds. We must be re-created in the Divine 
image. We must become like our Heavenly Father — at-one with 
Him, in feeling and purpose. This is the plain and indisputable 
teaching of the Bible, as it is the clearly pronounced verdict of 
enlightened reason. 

If our Lord by His sufferings and death, had made the most 
ample satisfaction to Divine Justice for man's disobedience, so 



106 THE A TONEMENT. 

that according to the theory, God could be just and remit the pen- 
alty due to sin, it would not have removed a single obstacle in his 
way to heaven, for it would not in itself have conferred fitness for 
heaven. It would be of no permanent service to man to remit the 
penalty of sin, while the sin remained. It would not save him 
from spiritual death. Men have fallen into a fatal error in con- 
founding sin with its penalty. They have mistaken the shadow 
for the substance, and have constructed theories of the Divine 
government and of human salvation upon it. 

It is remarkable that in the Old Testament there is no special 
word for punishment. He will be punished is expressed with the 
words " He shall bear his iniquities." It is also a peculiarity of 
the same Scriptures, that the highest blessing is expressed in the 
words, "The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee," and the 
phrase for the expression of the Divine anger is, "I will set my 
countenance against that man." The countenance of the Lord is 
always the same ; but how differently seen by him who is laden 
with the burden of iniquity. And so the New Testament, in re- 
spect to Christ's mission, uniformly and clearly teaches that it was 
to effect salvation from sin itself rather than from its guilt or pen- 
alty. The Lord's mission upon the earth, His life, sufferings and 
death, had no special and direct reference to save man from pun- 
ishment. If we can get a true idea of the work He really accom- 
plished, we can hardly fail to see that there was no possible way 
of avoiding the sorrow, though strictly speaking, it contributed 
nothing to our salvation. Let us try to understand what he ac- 
tually did. A Being of infinite love, wisdom, order and pnrity, 
assumed our mortal nature, as it existed in Mary, which is called 
in the scriptures "the natural man." It was full of hereditary 
evils. It contained in it the germ of every evil, and the seeds of 



THE ATONEMENT. 107 

dissolution. It was utterly opposite to the Divine life within, in 
every respect. It was repugnant to every principle and every 
form of Divine activity. This is directly the reverse of the Papal 
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and it may be supposed 
to imply the belief that our Lord sinned. But it does not. Evil is 
the tendency only ; sin is the voluntary carrying out of the tendency 
into act. Evil is the germ ; sin the ripe fruit. Our Lord assumed 
a human, not a Divine nature, and that nature was full of evil. 
There is a simple and unanswerable argument in favor of this truth. 
The Apostle says that Our Lord ''was in all points tempted 
like as we are, yet without sin." Now it is impossible for anyone 
to be tempted, unless there is some evil in his nature to appeal to. 
But there is no sin in being tempted. The sin consists in yielding. 
That Our Lord never did. Infernal ingenuity exhausted its illu- 
sions to make Him yield. Every natural evil was excited and 
made to hunger for its indulgence. The devil took Him up into 
an exceeding high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of 
the world and the glory of them, and said, " all these things will I 
give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." But He re- 
jected them all. He fought against them all. He overcame them 
all. What awful conflicts must have raged within Him ? What 
sharp and terrible agonies must have rent His soul ! What an 
inconceivable amount of the intensest pain must have been 
crowded into the few years He dwelt upon the earth. Truly He 
was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." In the light 
of this truth we can see whence originated the bloody sweat and 
awful agony of Gethsemane, and the despairing cry from Calvary. 
The death of the material body was nothing. That was not the 
life He gave for man. The life he laid down was the life of the 
infirm humanity He assumed from Mary. It was the death of all 



io8 THE ATONEMENT. 

falsity. It was the utter despair of every evil desire. It was the 
same death that we, in our degree, must die before we can really 
begin to live. The glorification of His humanity is the perfect 
pattern of our regeneration, and renders it possible. No, our 
Lord did not come into the world to satisfy the demands of an 
inflexible and arbitrary justice. This mistaking the penalty 
c-f sin for the sin itself has been one of the most mischievous and 
destructive errors in theology. It has diverted the minds of men 
from the true object of their attention and fastened them on a mere 
abstraction, upon the shadow instead of the substance, the effect 
instead of the cause. It has taken the whole subject of man's re- 
lations to God out of the established order and harmony of the 
Divine methods, and substituted a mere legal fiction for it, an ab- 
struse and artificial technicality, which bewilders the mind, out- 
rages the reason, and changes the plain and simple precepts of the 
gospel into abstruse and groundless abstractions, and ends by rep- 
resenting God as practically evading his own law under the pretence 
of fulfilling it. Our blessed Lord's mission was rather to satisfy 
the demands of infinite love than of austere justice ; not to pay a 
debt, but to reach the dying soul, to cleanse it from its impurities, to 
heal its diseases, to mould it into his own image and likeness, and 
fill it with His own peace and blessedness. His death was not, there- 
fore, the whole of the work of redemption. Our Lord declares the 
real truth when He says, " Because I live ye shall live also." His 
sufferings and death are the mere negative side of His work. 

But do not understand me as teaching that the death of our 
blessed Lord was a mere ending of His mortal existence. No one 
had ever entered the world as He, and He left the world as no one 
ever had. His birth and His death are alike mysteries such as 



THE ATONEMENT. 1 09 

" The angels desire to look into," and ages of human speculation 
have failed to solve. That death was something more than the 
ending of a life of self-negation and obedience. In the transcen- 
dent mysteries of the spirit world there appears to have been an 
inexplicable necessity that the vital principle of Christ's human 
nature should be poured forth in death that it might pass into man 
and regenerate him. The life of man was God's gift and it in- 
volved the death of Christ as the essential condition ot its com- 
munication. This truth is taught by the words of Christ in the 
sixth of Saint John and by his symbolic act of breaking the bread 
and pouring forth the wine in order that they might eat the one and 
drink the other. We also read that when our Lord first appeared 
to His disciples " He was known of them in breaking of bread." 
The blood of Christ, too, is uniformly spoken of in Holy Scrip- 
ture as a most living thing now communicable to us, and the effi- 
cacy of Christ's death can never be understood, unless it be thus 
viewed as a divine act of spiritual power in which every member 
of the race may to his infinite blessing, but must in some way par- 
ticipate. 

Thus, though the entire life of our Lord was a sacrifice for the 
sins of the world, His death was preeminently a sacrifice, nay, 
more, the sacrifice for those sins. And although we cannot fully 
understand how it was so, it plainly teaches us what a dreadful 
thing sin must be, seeing that to redeem mankind from its thral- 
dom, the Lord of glory had to undergo so much. Brave soldiers 
meet their death without fear, much more God's saints. We are 
wont to believe that the holier a man is the less his fear of dying. 
Some — a Ridley, a Latimer, have gone to a death of greater torture 
than the cross, with a smile on their face and cheerful words on 



I io THE A TONEMENT. 

their lips. How was it that He whose holiness was infinitely be- 
yond theirs, whose conscience knew no sin, to whom the other 
world was not a matter of faith only, but an open vision ; how 
was it that He, when the hour for dying approached, was filled 
with exceeding sorrow, overwhelmed with dread, crushed to the 
earth with an agony of spirit which forced the blood from His 
brow, straining to the very uttermost His human powers of endur- 
ance, so that in His extremity of suffering He prayed that the cup 
might pass from Him, yea, felt as though His father had forsaken 
Him — how was this? Why was this? What can all this mean? 
Surely there is something inexplicable about this death of Christ, 
making it totally unlike any other death of which we have ever read 
or heard, and the only explanation we have is, " for it became 
Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in 
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their sal- 
vation perfect through sufferings." " Though He were a son yet 
learned He obedience by the things which He suffered, and being 
made perfect He became the author of eternal salvation unto all 
that obey Him." The death of Christ ! With deepest reverence 
of soul approach that most mysterious sacrament of love — note the 
patience of His trial, the meekness of His submission to injustice 
and the malignant passion of His enemies ; behold the creation 
itself darkening and shuddering with horror at the dreadful scene; 
hear the cry of the crucified, " Father forgive them for they know 
not what they do," and then regard the life that was manifested 
dropping to cessation to deposit itself in the bosom of that malig- 
nant world to whose enmity it was yielded. See in those drops of 
sacred blood the unspeakable desire God feels to win us from sin 
to establish the order of His realm and to hallow in our hearts for 
eternity, the sanctity of His law. Thus will you know enough of 



THE A TONEMENT. ■ ill 

the wondrous mystery of Calvary. I do not care to distinguish 
the natures and say of Christ, He did this as man and that as God, 
This only confuses the matter of his identity. The natures are 
mingled in one Being. I bow before the mystery and do not ask 
for its solution. It is commonly held that God is impassable, 
though we never hesitate to affirm that He is displeased thus or 
thus, and this displeased state is so far, of course, an unpleased 
or painful state. That it would be impossible for God by a mys- 
terious union with the human to put Himself in contact with suf- 
fering, is a question far too exalted to be settled by dogma. We 
cannot thus intrude into the interior of God's mysteries. 

The death of Christ ! — When we wish to speak of this, we poor 
sinful men, speaking of an act of God on which depends our eter- 
nal weal or woe ; it may seem that any mere doctrinal statement 
of it must be cold and hard, even to profaneness. All our words 
should shape themselves into prayers or hymns of adoration, and 
our only attitude should be that of worship. To speak of these 
things merely in the way of explanation, without stopping to dwell 
more fully on the thoughts and feelings which they ought to in- 
cite, must almost seem to encourage that dangerous habit of list- 
ening with unmoved consciences to truths which should be most 
humbling and awakening. Still it is not less true that the more 
we try to understand God's deeper dealings with mankind, the 
more we shall know of His goodness and wisdom, and the 
more reasonable will be the service that we render Him. We 
cannot tell how the offering of the body of Jesus Christ is 
a sacrifice for sin, but though we cannot explain it, we still hold 
it fast as an undoubted and blessed truth that Christ bore our sins, 
but that He bore the penalty of our sins, never. Christ's death is 
uniformly spoken of in Scripture, as redeeming us, not from the 



1 1 2 THE A TONEMENT 

penalty of sin, but from sin itself, primarily. The central idea of 
the sin offering is not a vicarious satisfaction for sin, but a dying 
unto sin. Christ '" suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that 
He might bring us to God!' He is •' the Lamb of God which taketh 
away the sin of the world." "Who his own self bare our sins in 
His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto 
righteousness ." Sin is not a debt merely ; if so, it might have been 
cancelled by a word. Nor is it transgression merely, else it might 
be remedied by repentance. But sin is a spiritual disease that 
requires supernatural grace to heal. There has never been any 
exclusive theoryof the atonement defined by the Church Catholic. 
In her corporate capacity, she seems to have thought that so long 
as the great truth of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the 
world was held last, people might fairly be left to fill in the de- 
tails as accorded best with their own tone of thought, or as sug- 
gested by their devotional feelings. Many theories have Irom 
time to time been set forth, but they are all of them unsatisfactory, 
and some of them in the highest degree repulsive. Thus a view 
of the atonement which was put forth at the time of the Reforma- 
tion and which has now a wide acceptance, is to this effect : — Man- 
kind had become utterly depraved by " The Fall," and God's word 
had declared, and God's justice required, that sin should be 
punished. But God's mercy willed that man should be spared. 
This difficulty was met by God's giving His Son to take upon Him 
man's nature and suffer in man's stead. He was treated as guilty 
and His brief agony on the cross in someway increased in impor- 
tance by the dignity of His divinity was accepted as equivalent to 
man's endless torment. The principle of " Substitution " taught 
herein is known as the doctrine of Vicarious satisfaction, and it in- 
volves also the theory of "imputed righteousness," which is that 



THE A TONEMENT. 1 1 3 

not only were our sins attributed to Christ, so that He was treated 
as guilty, but also that His righteousness is imputed to us, so that 
those who throw themselves upon Christ's merits are acquitted as 
though they were as holy as He. Such is an outline of this most 
unchristian system. A system which singularly enough teaches 
that the justice of God differs from that of civilized man, only as 
resembling that of primitive barbarism. Briefly as I have spoken 
of it, I hope I have said enough to warn you against mixing up 
with the doctrine of the Atonement such pernicious theories. 
They cloud our most primary conceptions of the attributes of God. 
And so it is, that men have come to complain that they cannot be- 
lieve in a justice which strikes the innocent while it spares the 
guilty. They have asserted and not without reason, that they cannot 
understand a love which delays to forgive until it exacted rigorous 
compensation. It is obviously difficult to meet such objections as 
these, even to our own satisfaction, unless we have learnt that the 
notions which are thus attacked are no part of the doctrine of the 
Catholic Church, but merely the private theories, always fanciful, 
often heretical, of men within her fold. 

The Rabbinical notion of substitution has entered very deeply 
into most modern systems of theology, which generally ascribe to 
the sufferings and death of our blessed Lord, all that the Jews have 
grossly taught respecting animal sacrifices. Such a theory is as 
much opposed to revelation as it is repugnant to reason. But it is 
no less true that the transcendent mystery of Divine mercy, de- 
signed from the foundation of the world, and consummated in that 
historic death on the Cross, was the grand original of which all 
those patriarchal and Levitical sacrifices were the faint copies. 
The sacrifices of the Mosaic law were not, however, meant to repre- 
sent the punishment due to sin, but, on the contrary, a death unto 



114 THE ATONEMENT. 

sin, and the hallowing of every affection of the heart and principle 
of the mind to God. The scape-goat, therefore, over whom alone 
confession of transgression was made, symbolized the deportation 
of sin, not of its guilt or penalty. Nothing can be more clearly 
proven by Scripture, than that the things offered in sacrifice, and 
burnt upon the altar, were to be considered as constituting a feast 
of which the Lord expressed acceptance in its consumption by fire. 
The altar is, therefore, sometimes called "the table of the Lord." 
The animal offered symbolized the oblation of a pure and holy 
life, and the placing of the hand upon the animal was to express 
communication between the offerer and the oblation. All the 
Mosaic law of sacrifices was fulfilled in and by the Lord Jesus 
Christ in a super-eminent manner, and thus, in its highest sense, 
has reference to Him. He condescended to our low estate, and 
hallowed every principle or element of His human nature to the 
Divine, so that in Him, man, or human nature in general, was 
reconciled to God. We, in our subordinate degree, as walking 
after Him, are to be living sacrifices too, but He is the great sacri- 
fice, for through the glorification of our Lord's humanity, which 
was perfected by trials and sufferings, we have access to the Divin- 
ity. Our Lord teaches this truth very plainly when He says, " I 
am the door ; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and 
shall go in and out, and find pasture." What is the door but the 
medium of access ? How accurately is this expressed by St. Paul: 
" there is one God," says the apostle, " and one mediator between 
God and man, the man Christ Jesus." The holy apostle takes care 
to guard us from supposing that His divinity mediates between us 
and some other Divine Person by thus expressly restricting this 
office of mediation to our Lord's humanity. 

But it may be asked, how does this view of the subject agree 



THE A TONEMENT. 1 1 5 

with the declaration that we are- saved by the blood of Christ ? 
That He purchased us with His own blood? That we are 
"'justified," " propitiated," "redeemed," "brought nigh," " and 
saved by his blood ? " I answer that it perfectly harmonizes 
with it in whatever sense the term "blood" is used. By the blood 
of Christ, the Apostles generally mean His sufferings and death ; 
and this is doubtless the meaning generally attached to the word 
by Christians. The work He came to do, could not be effected 
without the shedding of His blood, and when it is declared that 
we are saved by the blood of Christ, that He purchased us with 
His blood, we must understand it in the same sense that we say 
that patriots killed in battle die for their country, and that they 
shed their blood for it. But everyone knows that the country is 
really not saved by the blood of its defenders, but by the defeat of 
its enemies. It is saved in fact by the shedding of the blood of 
its foes, rather than of its friends. Theologians have accepted 
this reasoning, but some have held that God regarded Christ as 
His enemy, and poured upon His innocent head the full mea- 
sure of the indignation and wrath that was due to the sinner. 
But that a Being of infinite love and wisdom and truth, could 
pretend that His son was guilty when He was not, and punish Him 
as though He were a rebel against His righteous government, and 
guilty of all the foul crimes of a perverted and corrupt humanity — 
when He knew that He was as innocent and spotless from any 
stain of guilt as Himself — is a doctrine so repugnant to reason, so 
contrary to every principle of justice, and derogatory to the Divine 
character, that it seems to be only necessary to state it, to cause a 
prompt and indignant rejection. 

But the blood of our Lord has another and more important 



1 1 6 THE A TON EM EN T 

meaning than His sufferings and death, a meaning which avoids 
all these difficulties, and explains many passages of Scripture 
which otherwise have only a remote and doubtful signification. 
Thus we read, "The blood is the life of the body," "The life of 
the flesh is in the blood," " Be sure thou eat not the blood, for the 
blood is the soul or life." Remembering that "the blood is the 
life," we begin to see the real meaning of those Scriptures that 
speak in varying phrase, of our being regenerated by the blood of 
Christ — (the life of Christ infused into us) purging our consciences 
from dead works, to serve the living God ; and that unless we 
drink His blood, we "have no life in us." If we are disposed to 
look a little deeper, we find that the blood of our Lord symbolizes 
Divine truth, which is the medium of spiritual life. If the material 
blood bears the same relations to, and performs the same offices 
for, the material body that the truth does for man's spirit ; if it con- 
tain the very substance of the body, and is perpetually employed 
in cleansing, renewing, and re-creating the body, as Divine truth 
is in regenerating and developing the soul, we can see why the 
Divine Wisdom employs it in revealing Himself to man, and why 
such sacred, powerful and important influences are attributed to it 
in Holy Scripture. But we shall see this more clearly as we enter 
into particulars, and if any general principle be true as a whole, it 
must be true in every one of its least parts. We can see why the 
Lord directed the Israelites to sprinkle the blood of the pascal 
lamb upon the thresholds and door-posts of their houses. It rep- 
resented the application of Divine truth to their minds ; and no 
destroying angel can ever enter the soul, or even touch it with a 
breath of its curse, when that soul is imbued with and protected 
by Divine truth. What a striking and grand presentation of the 
protecting power of truth, when man is in bondage to evil, and 



THE A TONEMENT. 1 1 7 

error. The Israelites represent the human soul enslaved by sin ; 
the Egyptians represent the evil and false principles that enslave 
it ; the destroying angel the inevitable consequences of sin, which 
can only be averted by the application of Divine truth to the soul. 
In this representation of Divine truth by blood, we find the reason 
why so much use was made of it in sacrifices, and why such par- 
ticular directions were given by God for its use and disposition. 
In consecrating Aaron and his sons to the priesthood, Moses was 
commanded to take of the blood of a ram and put it upon the tip 
of the right ear of Aaron, and upon the tip of the right ear of his 
sons, and upon the thumb of their right hand, and upon the great 
toe of their right foot, and sprinkle the blood upon the altar 
round about. The worship of the Jews was purely representative. 
God prescribed it with such minuteness and precision, that spirit- 
ual principles might have an exact counterpart and representative 
in natural things. If blood represents Divine truth, the applica- 
tion of it to Aaron and his sons, and to the altar, and sprinkling 
of it upon their garments, represents the application of truth to 
their minds, and to all those faculties of the mind, symbolized by 
the organs of the body, to which it was applied. How is man 
prepared to be a true priest of God, and a minister of the people, 
except by the application of truth to his mind ? He must hear it 
and obey it. It must be applied to his ear. He must do it. His 
very fingers must be employed in its service. He must walk in 
its ways. It must be applied to his feet. He must be consecrated 
by it. The more fully his understanding is filled and formed by 
Divine truth, and anointed by Divine love, which comes by, and 
is applied by truth, the better prepared he is to minister to the 
people. You may take every instance in which blood is used or 
mentioned in the Jewish ritual, and in every one it can be seen to 



1 1 8 THE A TONEMENT. 

represent Divine truth. Blood was employed in consecrating cov- 
enants, after proclaiming the laws to the children of Israel. Moses 
sacrificed peace offerings and bullocks unto the Lord, and he took 
the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people, 
and they said, all that the Lord hath said will we do and hear, and 
Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it upon the people and said, 
Behold the blood of the covenants which the Lord hath made up on 
you in all these words. Now the covenant is always made by 
truth. Human minds approach each other by means of the truth. 
Truth shows these relations to each other, and determines them. 
It shows what each party to the covenant is to do ; who is to give, 
and who is to receive ; who is to command, and who is to obey. 
This is a universal law. It applies to man's relations to God as 
fully as to his relations to his fellow man. 

There is therefore nothing arbitrary in the use of blood to sanc- 
tion a covenant between God and man. It is simply the expres- 
sion of that covenant in the lowest forms, in the language of nature 
as well as in the language of words. It is not a covenant of death 
but of life, which the blood by its very nature represents. Now 
we can take a step farther and see how it is that we are redeemed 
by the blood of Christ* I simply state a fact known to all physio- 
logists in saying that the body is constantly dying. We know 
how quickly it wastes away when it is deprived of food. The 
substance of the little cells whicn compose the primary organs is 
constantly passing away. The blood washes them and carries 
away the dead matter, which is no longer of use, and replaces it 
with living substance. This process is going on constantly. If it 
be interrupted for a moment natural life ceases. Is not this a 
perfect representative of one service which divine truth renders 
us? False principles and evil affections are the effete and dead 



THE A TON EM EN T. 1 1 9 

substances which poison the soul. Are they not removed by 
truth ? Can they be removed in any other way, or by any other 
means? Take a man whose understanding is full of false prin- 
ciples, and whose heart is foul with sin, how can you reform him? 
" Sanctify them through thy truth," is the prayer of the Lord, and 
all the operations of cleansing and purifying the soul are attributed 
to truth. When, therefore, it is said the Lord has washed us in 
His own blood, which is divine truth, we can see that it is a literal 
fact. This washing is not affected in any vicarious way as the 
term is commonly used. Redemption consists in being rescued 
from the power of our spiritual enemies, whether these enemies 
are hosts and false principles, or wicked beings in this world or 
any other, the process is the same. A man is redeemed from dis- 
ease and physical death through the blood. If the blood be pure, 
and can flow unobstructed through the whole system, it will soon 
redeem it from weakness and the power of all the enemies which 
would destroy it. So truth redeems us from error and all the evils 
which error causes. 

Finally, we can see what our Lord meant when He said we must 
drink His blood, and that His blood is drink indeed. We can see 
also why it is that so much is said about eating flesh and drinking 
blood in the Prophets and other parts of the Bible. To drink the 
Lord's blood is to receive divine truth in our understandings and 
to incorporate it into our lives, as the natural blood becomes a 
part of our bodies. The blood of Jesus Christ, it is said, cleanseth 
from all sin. The robes of the redeemed whom St. John saw, were 
made white in the blood of the Lamb. He also calleth upon the 
seven churches " to give glory and dominion to Him who hath 
loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." Now 
no one supposes that the material blood shed upon the cross 



120 THE ATONEMENT. 

cleanses from sin. All persons, whatever be their doctrine, agree 
that it is not the blood itself but what it represents that saves us. 
They correctly regard the blood as a type representing something 
else, only many believe erroneously it is the type of death, whereas 
it is really the type of life. We are saved by being cleansed from 
sin by being cured from our spiritual diseases and by the applica- 
tion of divine truth to the dying soul. The shedding of His blood 
is not therefore an awful penalty rendered to a vengeful justice. 
It is the pouring out of our Divine Redeemer's truth and life into 
the hearts and understandings of man. His shedding it as the 
sun sheds its light and heat. It implies no implacable and enraged 
deity, no legal technicalities, no division of the personal unity of 
God, no sacrifice of the innocent for the guilty, no possible trans- 
fer of righteousness, no vicarious suffering in its dogmatic sense, 
and no imputed righteousness. 

It seems a very unsatisfactory way of closing this Dissertation 
upon the Atonement, to say that if we knew ten times as much 
concerning the doctrine as we do, the result of our knowledge 
would be but to make us more conscious of our ignorance. The 
mysteries of Redemption are not to be dealt with by mere human 
reason and intelligence, and this we very soon find out. We 
may read and study and search, and though we may acquaint 
ourselves with certain facts and with the outlines of certain 
principles, we do not really get very much nearer the end. 
We can do little more than exclaim with St. Paul, " O the 
depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the know- 
ledge of God ! How unsearchable are His judgments and His 
ways past finding out." Creation is a mystery. The Universe is 
a great mystery ; but O the most profound mystery in all the 



THE A TONEMENT. 1 2 1 

abysses of God's infinite majesty is here, in the work He does to 
unite us unto himself. 

The main purpose of this Dissertation has been to set forth the 
doctrine of the Atonement in harmony with the teaching of the 
early Fathers of the church ; in harmony with the instincts of a 
healthy conscience ; and above all in harmony with the teaching of 
Holy Scripture. The deep comfort of the doctrine who can tell ? 
But it is not the comfort of sin being made less penal, it is not the 
comfort of being told that another has borne for us the punishment 
that we deserved. Infinitely deeper is the comfort of the Cross of 
Christ to those who know its power. It is the comfort of having 
our sense of sin so deepened that we learn to hate it with a perfect 
hatred. It is the comfort of a new hope and power within us, en- 
abling us to crush and mortify sin more and more in all our mem- 
bers. It is the comfort of believing that in Christ sin hath been 
altogether crucified, and if we are in Him God is faithful and just 
to forgive us our sins now, and to sanctify us perfectly hereafter. 



JUSTIFICATION 



Christ's work of mercy has two chief parts — what He did for all 
men, what He does for each ; what He did externally to us, what 
He does within us ; what He did in His own person, what He does 
by His Spirit, His work of atonement, and the application of it 
as our justification. Christ's mission ended when He left the 
world ; He was to come again, but by His Spirit. The Holy Spirit 
realizes and completes the redemption-wrought essence and virtue 
of Christ. 

We know very little of the reasons of God's wonderful provi- 
dences — why an atonement was necessary, why the Son of God 
was the sacrifice. Let us accept what is given, adore God's wisdom 
and be thankful and silent. But whatever be the deep reasons, 
this seems to be the rule of His counsels as to our justification, 
that as it was a necessary part of the atonement that there should be a 
material, local sacrifice of that "Holy Thing" conceived by the 
Holy Ghost, and " therefore " called " the Son of God " — a sacri- 
fice made once for all — so there must be a spiritual, omnipresent 
communication of that sacrifice continually. God the Son atoned ; 
God the Holy Ghost justifies. Further, it would appear as if His 
going to the Father was in fact the same thing as His coming to us 
spiritually. I mean there is some mysterious connection between 



> USTIFICA TIOM. 1 23 

His departing in His human personality and returning in His Holy 
Spirit. He said that unless He went away His Spirit would not 
come unto us, as though His ascending and the Spirit's descend- 
ing, if not the same act, yet was very closely connected, and ad- 
mitted of being spoken of as the same. And thus His rising was the 
necessary condition of His applying the virtue of that atonement 
which His dying had completed for all men. While He was on the 
cross, and while His body lay in the tomb, the treasure existed ; 
the precious gift was perfected, but it lay hidden ; it was not yet 
available for its gracious ends ; it was not diffused, communi- 
cated, shared in, enjoyed. Thus He died to secure what He rose 
again to apply. " He died for our sins ; He rose again for our 
justification." He died in the flesh ; He rose again "according 
to the spirit of holiness," which, when He was risen, He also 
sent forth from Him, dispensing to others that life wherein He rose 
Himself. And here I have touched upon another part of the har- 
mony of the Divine dispensation, which may be profitably dwelt 
upon. He is said to be "justified by the Spirit," as it would ap- 
pear, because He was by the Spirit raised again, proved innocent, 
made to triumph over His enemies, declared the Son of God, and 
exalted on the holy Hill of Sion. It was said, " Thou art my Son, 
this day have I begotten Thee," in which words He was recognized 
as the Dearly Beloved of the Father. This was His justification, 
and ours consists in our regeneration also, and His was the begin- 
ning of ours, as joint heirs with Him. The Divine life which 
raised Him flowed over, and availed unto our rising again from sin 
and condemnation. It wrought a change in His sacred manhood, 
which became spiritual without His ceasing to be man, and was in 
a wonderful way imparted to us as a new creating, transforming 
power in our hearts. This was the gift bestowed on the Church 



1 24 JUST1FICA TION. 

upon His ascension ; for while He remained on earth, though risen, 
it was still withheld. During the interval too, if we may speak 
without presumption, He seems to have been in an intermediate 
state, passing by an orderly course from what He had been to what 
He is in glory. He was neither in His body of flesh, nor in His 
glorified body. When, however, on His ascension, He became a 
life-giving Spirit, in the power of the Spirit He came to us to 
justify us, as He had been justified. Hence the force of St. Paul's 
expressions concerning "the exceeding greatness of God's power 
to usward that believe according to the working of His mighty 
power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the 
dead ;" and the blessedness of " knowing Him and the power of 
His resurrection ; " and again our being " made alive together with 
Christ, and raised up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." 
At the final and solemn meeting with His disciples before His cru- 
cifixion to which I have alluded in a previous dissertation, our 
Lord said, " And I will pray the Father and He shall give you an- 
other Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever, even the 
Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth 
Him not, neither knoweth Him, for He dwelleth with you and 
shall be in you." 

Our Lord had already declared His oneness with the Father, but 
who was this " Comforter," this " Spirit of Truth," who was then 
dwelling with the disciples and was to be in them ? Was it another 
Divine Person ? The question is answered in the very next verse, 
"I will not leave you comfortless : / wilt come to you. Yet a little 
while, and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me : because I 
live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my 
Father, and ye in me, and I in you." Yes ! He who had said to 
Thomas, "I am the- Way and the Truth and the Life" as a Life-giv- 



JUSTIFICATION. 125 

ing Spirit, was to come andgttide into all truth. His disciples had en- 
joyed His visible and bodily presence, but He was to make a 
nearer approach ; after His ascension they were to have a Comforter, 
an invisible, spiritual presence within them ; or more definitely, the 
indwelling of the Almighty Father who was the Divine principle 
within Him, and whose communication to the faithful as a Quick- 
ening Spirit, was to be effected through the mediation of the 
humanity He was to glorify. This truth is forcibly expressed by 
St. Iraneus in these words : "As the light of the Father entered 
into the humanity of the Lord, so it comes beaming forth from 
Him on us, and now He in his humanity is the fountain of the 
Holy Spirit for all who believe in Him." And so it is written 
"the first man Adam was made a living soul ; the last Adam 
was made a quickening spirit. The first man is of the earth, 
earthy : the second man is the Lord from Heaven." Here I would 
speak again of the use of the word " person" as a theological dis- 
tinction which, it is very clear to me, is operating a sad corruption 
and depression in our modern piety, even if originally there was 
nothing false in the term ; for we have now taken it practically by rais- 
ing a scheme of dogma based, although not confessedly so, on Trithe- 
istic principles. Such theology confuses and distracts the mind, 
and runs into contradictions against the plain teachings of the 
Bible and reason ; and when carried out to its legitimate conclu- 
sions contradicts itself. It requires the most skilful and agile 
metaphysician to defend it, and the greatest ability to say one thing 
and mean another, and the most remarkable facility in forgetting 
one side of the question, while the other is advocated. Theo- 
logians insist on the distinct personality of the Spirit, but 
raise at the same time a scheme of dogma which reduces Him 
to a something literally purchased for us, or a more causative 



126 JUSTIFICATION. 

agency. The exigencies of theology must be hard pressing indeed 
that can turn this sweet and blessed doctrine aside, of a cleansing, 
comforting and life-giving power, pulsing into the soul from a Di- 
vine Saviour, brought near to the disciple by a personal commu- 
nion and lowly faith, for that strange riddle of the understanding, 
a Third Person in the Trinity coming and going between God and 
man. This manifestly is not the Holy Spirit of the Scriptures, but 
the Holy Spirit rather of the schools. The Holy Spirit is not a 
mere abstract influence ; it is the Blood of the Lamb that 
cleanses us from all sin. It is the water of life, which 
becomes a well of water, springing up into eternal life, 
in every heart which receives it. It is the bread of life, which 
cometh down from heaven, that man may eat thereof, and not die. 
It is the Divine Truth which sanctifies us, and fills the understand- 
ing with heavenly light. It is a heavenly divine life, germinating 
within us, and when its work is fully completed in us, when by its 
assistance constantly given, we have laid down our natural, evil 
life, when we have been born again by the regenerating influences 
of this Holy Spirit; when we have been created anew into Christ's 
image and likeness ; then we shall become the sons of God, " For 
as many as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 
And if children then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint heirs with 
Christ." "There is therefore now no condemnation to them 
which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the spirit. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of 
sin ; but the spirit is life because of righteousness. If the spirit 
of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that 
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal 
bodies by His spirit that dwelleth in you. For if ye live after the 



JUSTIFICATION. 1 27 

flesh, ye shall die : but if ye through the spirit do mortify the 
deeds of the body, ye shall live." 

Thus we are to believe that by a life-giving communion and fel- 
lowship with Christ, is effected the remission (renunciation) of 
sin, and reconciliation and at-onement with God. It is by having 
Christ, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, dwelling 
within us, as an ever-active and vital energy or principle of media- 
tion, that we have acceptance with God and the hope of glory ; and 
so we read: "This is the covenant that I will make with them 
after those days, saith the Lord : / will put my law into their hearts, 
and in their minds will I write them, and [as a sequence] their sins 
and iniquities will I remember no more." Now, where remission 
(renunciation) of these is, there is no more offering for sin. Thus, 
justification results from a real unity, an at-one-ment. It is no 
mere moral influence theory ; it is no satisfaction or governmental 
theory ; it is no disentanglement of merely legal difficulties ; it is 
no contract between three parties, who are yet but one ; it involves 
no verbal quibbles, calling men good, when they have only been 
saved from the just deserts of their sins by the punishment of the 
innocent. The sin itself is forgiven, that is, given up ; it is remit- 
ted, that is, rejected, cast out from the soul. Man is purged of 
the corruption of sin by the blood of Christ ; for the spirit of truth 
is that blood which He has shed, is now shedding, and ever will 
shed, for the regeneration and life of men. The Lord's merits are 
not imputed, not transferred to our account, as the merchant trans- 
fers accounts in his ledger, but His life is transferred into our 
souls and becomes our life, not by a legal fiction, or any meta- 
physical subtilty, but by its reception into our wills and under- 
standings, into our thoughts and deeds. It becomes our life, as 
the bread we eat and the water we drink become the bone and 



1 28 JUSTIFICA TION. 

muscle, the flesh and blood, the substance and strength, of our 
material bodies, when they are incorporated into our forms. 

Our Lord said in His promise of the Comforter, " I will come 
to you," and to His Apostles, " Lo, I am with you always." And 
this is said, evidently, that we may conceive the Holy Spirit in 
some proper sense. Christ Himself with us always, in all the 
feeling of Jesus, breathing His love and life in every fibre of our 
inner man. The word is nigh unto us, even in our mouth and 
heart. The Christ of the garden and the cross is with us, suing at 
our heart, and striving to communicate all that we could hope from 
the love of Gethsemane and Calvary. I think I sometimes detect 
in the language and writings even of those who claim exceptional 
fidelity to the orthodox and evangelical creed, unambiguous proof 
that they have a most inadequate sense of the exceeding majesty of 
the Son of God. They speak of Him with a fondling affection 
which is inconsistent with true reverence. They are always "lying 
on His breast," but they never fall at His feet with wonder and 
with fear. Their faith in His sympathy with them in their sorrow 
is most real, but there is no such awe as must come from a deep 
and vivid sense of His authority as the incarnate God and the great 
King of Kings and Lord of Lords. They are so interested in His 
human development, so fascinated with the ethical perfection of 
his character, His tenderness with the infirmities of men, His mer- 
ciful words to those who have grievously sinned, the charm of His 
home friendship, the tears which He shed over Jerusalem, and the 
agony which came upon Him in the garden, that they absolutely 
and habitually ignore the fact of His second coming and invisible 
presence in power and majesty. They seem unconscious that He 
who ascended up out of sight has come again to His Church, un- 
seen, excepting through the eye of faith, in power and not in 



y US TIFICA TION. 1 29 

weakness, with the sceptre and not the sin-offering, not to secure 
redemption, but bestow it, not to lay the foundation in sacer- 
dotal sorrow, but to erect the fabric with sovereign strength. The 
sacrifice of Christ was His flesh for the life of the world, and so at 
His first advent He came and lived and died visibly. But the 
kingdom of Christ is an invisible kingdom, and cometh not with 
outward show. The scribes of Christ's day said that Elijah was 
yet to come. If many in the Church have long been blind to the 
actual advent of the King, we must not be blind also. If many 
Christians erroneously look for a visible second advent, for a King 
that tarries long, instead of coming quickly ; for a kingdom local- 
ized at Jerusalem, as specialized in Palestine, instead of catholi- 
cized in a cosmical brotherhood, why should this confound us? 
Christendom has always had its fragmentary divisions and diversi- 
ties. It is true that in His love for us, and in His eagerness for 
our salvation, the Lord of Glory descended from the throne of 
God to the low level of our human life, but it is not for us to with- 
hold the homage He voluntarily surrendered when He was visibly 
present among men. It is not for us to prolong His humiliation, 
and keep Him uncrowned. As our Priest, He died for us to pro- 
cure salvation ; as our King, He reigns over us to bestow it. He 
died sacerdotally for us, and we may be saved ; when He sove- 
reignly lives in us, we are saved. 

According to the Scriptures, Christ rose from the dead by His 
own power, yet the Holy Ghost is said to have raised Him. The 
Word of God descended into the Virgin's womb, and found Him- 
self a human tabernacle, yet the being so born was conceived of 
the Holy Ghost. I call your attention to this to show how little 
countenance Holy Scripture gives for the metaphysical tri-personal 
distinctions of sectarian theology, before proceeding to comment 



130 yUSTIFICA TION. 

on several important texts bearing on the subject under review, 
and which tend to prove that our ascended Lord, by ascending, 
has returned to us invisibly as a Spirit. Consider St. Paul's 
words : " There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. 
The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was 
made a quickening spirit. . . The first man is of the earth, earthy ; 
the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earth, earthy, 
such are they also that are earthy ; and as is the heavenly, such 
are they also that are heavenly." And, recollect, this is said in 
answer to the question, " With what body do the dead come ? 
But objection might be made then, as now, that since the compo- 
nent particles of our bodies are ever changing during life, since 
on death they are dissipated to the four winds, the same body can- 
not be raised ; what is meant, then, by its being called the same 
body? St. Paul answers that it will be the same body in the sense 
that a blade of wheat is the same with the seed ; being contained 
within it, and at length developed. So also there is a natural 
body, and a spiritual body ; and the natural body comes first, as 
the seed does. The spiritual body — how or what we know not — 
is formed within it, the same as it, yet different in its accidents. 
Corruption, dissolution, mortality, are but the accidents of the 
Christian's body, and are separated from it forever on its rising 
again. What we see is not the real body ; it is but the outward 
shell ; the real body of the regenerate will not be a material, but a 
spiritual substance, of which the seed is now deposited within us. 
The Apostle then goes on to say how this takes place, viz., by a 
new birth from Christ. The first man Adam was of the earth, 
earthy ; and all who are born from Him are earthy like him. Such 
is the generation of those who are born after the flesh. But the 
second man is not merely living, but life-giving. He is a " quick- 



JUSTIFICATION. 13* 

ening [or life-giving] Spirit ; " the very words (be it observed) which 
our Saviour had used in His discourse in the synagogue at Caper- 
naum, recorded in the sixth chapter of St. John, when He said, 
" It is the Spirit that is the life-giver." As we derive our carnal 
and mortal nature from Adam, so the life-giving Spirit is the seed 
and principle of spiritual bodies to all who are His. " Flesh and 
blood," says the Apostle, " cannot inherit the kingdom of God." 
Here, too, is a parallel to our Lord's words : " The flesh profiteth 
nothing." And further, as our Lord at Capernaum referred to His 
ascension and exaltation, so here again the life-giving Spirit is 
said to be " the Lord from heaven." Thus this passage, equally 
with the record ol our Lord's words by St. John, speaks of our 
ascended Lord as a Spirit present in His people, and that 
apparently because He has ascended. Another passage of the 
same description, though the ascension is not mentioned, is 
St. Paul's declaration to the Corinthians, that "he that is 
joined to the Lord is one Spirit." Taking these words in their 
context, they have a remarkable force in showing the extent 
of our Lord's condescension towards us under the Gospel. 
But I quote them here in order to point out that the gift of the 
Spirit is none other than the entrance into us of the ascended and 
invisible Saviour. To be joined as one to Christ, and to be a tem- 
ple of the Holy Ghost, are spoken of as the same gift. It is to be 
observed, moreover, that St. Paul, who here speaks of Christ as a 
Spirit, elsewhere speaks of Him as still possessed of a bodily sub- 
stance, and as communicating Himself to us as such. "We are 
members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" An- 
other remarkable text of the same kind occurs where St. Paul, 
after describing the "glorious ministration of the Spirit," which is 
14 righteousness," or justification, proceeds : " Now the Lord is that 



132 JUSTIFICATION. 

Spirit ; and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. But 
we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the 
Spirit of the Lord." I am not here concerned to explain the course 
of the Apostle's teaching in this chapter ; but it would appear on 
the face of "it that the righteousness of the Gospel, which is also 
"liberty " and "glory," is also "ministered " to us by One who is 
first called "the Spirit," and then "the Lord "Christ. The man- 
ner, too, in which are interchanged the words, "the Spirit," "the 
Lord," and " the Spirit of the Lord," is very observable. 

That our justification is connected in some unknown way with 
Christ's ascension and going out of sight, is also implied in His 
words concerning the Holy Ghost in His last discourse with His 
disciples. "When He is come, He will reprove," or convince, 
" the world of sin, because they believe not on me ; of righteous- 
ness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more," seems, I 
say, in acordance with the other texts quoted, to connect our justi- 
fication with some mysterious necessity on the part of the Justifier, 
of removing from us His corporeal presence and coming to us 
invisibly. Before we can gain a true idea of the nature of His as- 
cension, it is necessary to know that it does not mean any change in 
space, but a change in state. It consisted in the glorification of 
His human nature, or making it Divine. As He was in the world 
before His incarnation, as truly as He was after it, though not in 
form appreciable by the human senses, so He was in the world 
after His ascension, and is now, more fully than before it, though 
we cannot see His face or hear His voice. And here, perhaps, we 
may see the intimate connection between justification and faith. If 
justification, or the imparting of righteousness, be a work of the 
Holy Ghost, a spiritual gift or presence in the heart, it is plain that 



JUSTIFICA TION. 1 33 

faith, and faith alone, can discern it, and open the heart for its re- 
ception, as the Spirit alone can give it. While Christ was present 
in the flesh, He might be seen by the eye ; but His more perfect 
and powerful presence, which we now enjoy, being invisible, can 
be discerned and used by faith only. We have no reason for sup- 
posing that the supernatural providences of God are not ordered 
upon a system of antecedents or second causes as precise as in the 
natural system any one thing is a necessary condition of another. 
The foundation is Jesus Christ ; to faith is assigned the honorable 
task of finding the foundation and laying on it the first stone 
cemented in the tear of repentance. Yet this is the bare begin- 
ning. As theology is a science in which no one idea stands alone, 
but each is a link in an endless chain, reaching from first truths up 
to boundless demonstrations ; so practical religion is also a holy 
chain — link fastened to link, Christ to faith, faith to hope, hope to 
charity, charity to holiness, holiness to heaven, heaven to Christ 
again in God. By this celestial chain, that reaches from this dark 
world to heaven, of which Christ crucified is the earthly anchorage, 
and Christ glorified the heavenly, with the long series of virtues 
and graces glittering between, we are to be drawn to God. 

To the catholic heart, that a man is "justified by faith" is a 
most true and comfortable doctrine. But to fritter away this vast 
circle of truth into a mere belief in Christ as a Redeemer, and 
this again into a trust in His atonement ; and this atonement again 
into a satisfaction to Divine justice ; and this satisfaction, once 
more into mere suffering ; and this faith itself concentrated 
into a single act of "casting the soul" upon this suffering for 
hope ; and Christ entirely unknown, as the second Adam, communi- 
cating from His body into ours, a quickening and transforming 
life, purifying our flesh by the sarrie agencies or operations that 



134 JUSTIFICATION. 

purified His ; this is a mode of teaching which we must regard as 
unsafe and soul-ruinous in the highest degree. 

It is said in the Gospel according to St. Mark, " So then, after 
the Lord had spoken unto them, He was raised up into Heaven 
and sat on the right hand of God." Connecting this statement 
with another by the Apostle to the Hebrews, where it is declared 
of Jesus that " He is able to save them to the uttermost that come 
unto God by Him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for 
them," theologians have been in the habit of representing the 
Savour as literally interceding with the Father for sinners, 
leading the same as a person intercedes with a king or an executive 
officer in behalf of others. This is a very false and gross idea of 
the intercession or mediation of our Blessed Lord, and He Him- 
self gives the best of reasons for its being untrue. "At that day," 
our Lord said, referring to the period when He, having risen from 
the dead, would pour out His Holy Spirit upon his disciples ; "at 
that day, I say not that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father 
himself /oveth you." Although no one is nearer to us than God, 
there are times when no one seems farther from us. It is state, 
not space, that gives the sense of separateness. When Jesus was in 
states of humiliation, as in temptation and suffering, it seemed to 
Him as if the Divine Father were a Being separate and remote 
from Himself, for He was then governed by the finite consciousness 
of His humanity. But our Lord Himself does not and cannot now 
offer intercessory prayer as He did upon earth, although He still 
prays in us, for we know not what we should pray for as we 
ought. That Divine influence, which descended into His own 
frail Humanity, and ascended from His human heart and lips in real 
and earnest prayer, comes down from His glorified humanity, that 
it may ascenifrom our lips to Him, as, in his humiliation, His 



JUSTIFICA TION. 1 3 5 

ascended to the Father. It is a doctrine of Holy Scripture that 
God is the Inspirer as well as the Author of prayer. No prayer 
can ascend to heaven but that which has come down from heaven, 
but the Divine inflatus must clothe itself with human thought, as 
it of necessity did, when it came down into the finite faculties 
which our Lord had assumed. 

The subject of the intercession of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ is not a doctrine presented very prominently in the Scrip- 
tures, being only mentioned in two places in the New Testament. 
But on these two passages I think very extravagant conclusions 
have been founded, although doubtless the popular view of the 
subject is much modified at the present day. The true idea of 
mediation, is not that which exists between one person and 
another, but that of an instrumentality provided for the accom- 
plishment of some purpose, which could not be effected without 
it. There is no idea of praying or pleading, or persuading or pro- 
pitiating God to do what he dislikes to do. The whole plan con- 
sists in simply providing the means, a mediation by which He 
can accomplish the benign purposes of His infinite love. The 
glorified humanity of our Lord is that medium. It intercedes, that is, 
it goes between the sinner and God — for this is the true meaning 
of intercession. God thus in His work of grace, as in all His 
works, for some inscrutible reason, restricts Himself to certain 
conditions and instrumentalities to accomplish His ends. And 
here, in conclusion, I am led to suggest the sense of another text, 
which has no great obscurity on the face of it, yet seems to mean 
more than cursory readers are apt to consider. I mean St. Paul's 
words to the Colossians, — " Your life is hid with Christ in God." 

Now when we come to consider these words are they not harsh 
and strange, if they mean merely what the popular way of viewing 



136 JUSTIFICA TION. 

them in our day represents. If life means what men at pre- 
sent are content that it should mean, the life of religion and devo- 
tion, " spiritual mindedness," (as it is sometimes called,) is it not 
a very violent phrase to say " it is hid in God ? " Is it not irre- 
verent taken literally ? Can it be made reverent without explain- 
ing away its wording? If, however, the foregoing remarks be ad- 
mitted as true, we are able to take this and similar statements of 
Scripture literally. For it would seem that, in truth, the principle 
of our spiritual existence is Divine, is an ineffable presence of God. 
Christ who promised to make all His disciples one in God with 
Him, who promised that we should be in God and God in us, has 
made us so, — has in some mysterious way accomplished for 
us this great work, this stupendous privilege. It would seem 
moreover, as I have said, that He has done so by ascending to the 
Father ; that His ascent bodily is His descent spiritually ; that 
His taking our nature up to God is the descent of God into us ; 
that he has truly, though in an unknown sense, taken us to God, 
or brought down God to us, as we view it. Thus when St. Paul 
says that our life is hid with Him in God, we may suppose Him to 
intimate that our principle of existence is no longer a mortal earthly 
principle, such as we derive from Adam, but that we are baptized 
and hidden in God's glory — that we are transformed, spiritualized, 
glorified in the Divine nature — that through the participation of 
Christ ; we receive as through a channel, the true presence of 
£od within and without us imbuing us with sanctity and immor- 
tality. This, I repeat is our justification, our ascent through Christ 
to God, or God's descent through Christ to us ; we may call it 
either of the two ; we ascend into Him ; He descends into us ; we 
are in Him, He in us , Christ being the One Mediator, the way, 
the truth and the life, joining earth with Heaven. And this 



J US TIFICA TION. 1 37 

is our true Righteousness, — not the mere name of righteousness, 
not only forgiveness or favor as an act of God's mind, not only 
sanctification within (great indeed as these blessings would 
be, yet it is somewhat more), it implies the one, it involves the 
other, it is the indwelling of our glorified Lord, " even the mystery 
which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now 
is made manifest to His saints ; to whom God would make 
known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery a.nong the 
Gentiles ; which is Christ in us the hope of glory " 

This is the one great gift of God secured by the Atonement 
which is power instead of weakness, bondage and suffering — which 
is light and life instead of darkness and the shadow of death. 



THE CHURCH 



I have already spoken of the natural body which our Lord as- 
sumed, and of His glorified and spiritual body ; I would now speak 
of His Mystical body, the church which He established to minis- 
ter Himself and His Atonement to men. Our adorable Lord be- 
fore His ascension to heaven, did not teach all who were to be 
taught ; nor feed all who were to be fed ; nor bless all that were to 
be blessed ; nor suffer all that was to be suffered for the world's 
redemption. Christ soon went out from Himself into the twelve, 
the seventy, the hundred and twenty, the three thousand, the Uni- 
versal Church, to multiply and replenish the earth. Do we suffi- 
ciently realize all that is contained in the privilege of being in 
communion of the church? If Christ's Church be in truth His 
Body, if to be in communion with the Church, is indeed to be in 
communion with Christ, what a glorious privilege God has given us 
in His Church ? We who are ingrafted into it are members of His 
Body, of His flesh, and of His bones, as truly as we are of the first 
man, and by this blessed union, we derive our life through the quick- 
ening Spirit. We are His eyes to look around and weep with those 
that weep ; His feet to go from scene to scene of want and sorrow ; 
His hands to distribute bread among the poor, and to be laid in 



THE CHURCH. 139 

blessing on the heads of little ones ; His ears to hear the cry of 
distress along the wayside ; His lips to teach, console and save ; in 
a word we are a Royal Priesthood to " fill up that which is behind 
of the afflictions of Christ, * * for His body's sake, which is the 
church." Nearly half our Lord's teachings was about the church 
that was upon the eve of being established upon the earth. Many 
of his parables were designed to teach people what it was to be 
like. It was to be like the estate of an absent landlord, show- 
ing that Christ would not reign visibly over His church. It was 
to be like the mustard seed, showing how it was to grow from a 
very small beginning. It was to be like a net, taking good and 
bad fish ; a field sown with good and bad seed ; a marriage feast, 
where some had not a wedding garment, showing that in this 
world, the members of the church would be a mingled company 
of good and bad. All this was to the multitude. To the Apos- 
tles, Christ spoke of the future government of His Church; 
how there was to be a sign and seal of admission, namely, bap- 
tism ; how those who were baptised were to be bound together in 
communion with each other and with Christ by the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper ; how he meant to establish in His church a 
ministry of reconciliation, to preach to the world remission of 
sins through repentance and faith ; how they and their success- 
ors were to have committed to them the keys of heaven in the 
dispensation of the varied ordinances and means of grace of His 
Church ; how the Holy Ghost would dwell in his Church, as in 
His Temple, and guide them into all truth ; how he would never 
withdraw His presence to the end of the world ; and how the gates 
of hell should never prevail against it. 

Such was Christ's teaching about His future church, before His 
death. In the great forty days that followed His resurrection, we 



140 THE CHURCH. 

are told that He spoke "of the things pertaining to the kingdom 
of God" — giving "commandments" about it to His Apostles. 
What these more particular instructions of the organization of the 
church were, we are not strictly told ; but indirectly we may learn 
what they were, by watching the manner in which the Apostles 
gave them effect. The day of Pentecost was, so to speak, the 
birthday of the church. On that day the foundation of the everlast- 
ing temple promised to David was laid. Its corner-stone had, 
it is true, been laid by the great builder, while yet He was on earth, 
but until the day of Pentecost the church was a body without a 
soul — a temple without illumination. Then came light into the 
temple. Glorious and mighty was the operation of that power 
whereby in the beginning of time, chaos was illuminated, and 
stood forth in the glory of a perfected universe, but more grand 
than that was the sudden illumination of the sons of men by 
their Creator. The first coming of the Holy Ghost was a visible 
coming, because He came to send forth on its glorious career the 
visible Church of God. It was God's last and nearest visible ap- 
proach to the sons of men. Grounded in the predeterminate 
councils of the Father, Redeemed by the blood of the Son, sanc- 
tified by the indwelling Spirit ; the church could have but one 
Lord, one faith, one baptism. On that first generation of Chris- 
tians and especially on those who were Apostles, or of Apostolic 
rank, was devolved a responsibility which has rested on no suc- 
ceeding generation of Christians. That first age had to com- 
mit to writing and to fix for all time, the revelation which' had 
been made to the world by Christ. The Pentecostal gift of extra 
ordinary inspiration ceased with that first age, but our Lord's 
Apostles made provision to insure the preaching of true doctrine 
in all subsequent ages of the church. No attentive reader of the 



THE CHURCH. 141 

New Testament can fail to see how carefully the ministry of the 
Word and Sacraments was hedged about. Our Lord did not com- 
mission all His disciples to be ministers of the gospel, but only 
chosen men whom He called Apostles. They were to preach, and 
baptize, and to break bread in remembrance of Him. After His 
resurrection, He gave them a more solemn commission, " As my 
Father hath sent me, even so send I you." And that His commis- 
sion was not limited to the Apostles, but meant to extend to their 
successors also, He made plain by adding " Lo, I am with you al- 
ways, even to the end of the world." Most careful therefore, 
were the apostles to ordain Elders in every city, by the laying on 
of hands, who should continue this ministry in their absence, and 
after their death. In the New Dispensation as in the old, no man 
can undertake the priesthood except, "he be called of God." 
Accordingly St. Paul asks, " How shall they preach except they 
be sent ? " and forbids the notion that all are legally entitled to 
preach, asking, "Are all Apostles? Are all Prophets? Are all 
Teachers ? " So careful was he to provide for the ordination of 
qualified men as ministers, that when he could not visit a church 
himself for this purpose, we find him sending vicars — apostolic, 
to act for him, as Timothy to Ephesus, and Titus to Crete. From 
the instructions which he gave them, we learn that their chief func- 
tion was their ordination of deacons and presbyters. They were 
to select, prove, examine, and by laying on of hands, commission 
these deacons and presbyters ; and again and again he charges 
them to deliver to these younger ministers, the same sound form 
of words, the same sound doctrine which they (Timothy and Titus) 
had received from the apostles at their own ordination. "Hold 
fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me. 
* * * That good thing which was committed unto thee, 



142 THE CHURCH. 

keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. And the nights 
that thou has heard of me among many witnesses, the same com- 
mit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." 

From the pastoral epistles it clearly appears that Timothy and 
Titus held a grade of ministry superior to and distinct from that 
of the presbyters and deacons whom they are commissioned to 
ordain. Whether this highest grade received then, or a generation 
later, the distinctive name of bishops is unimportant ; and whether 
now they be called bishops or chief pastors, or chief presbyters* 
is unimportant, provided apostolic order is maintained. 
The early fathers, in arguing with heretics, appeal again 
and again to the continuity of the Christian ministry as a 
very important feature in the polity of the church. There are 
always some who chafe under these wise restrictions, who would 
relax all rules, admit all to be ministers. Not so Christ's apostles. 
They would have none who were not duly approved and commis- 
sioned to take upon them this ministry. To the inspired foresight 
we owe it that this sacred torch of Divine truth, and these sacra- 
ments of grace have been handed down to our later days. We cannot 
understand why God should employ any human or material means 
for the conveyance of his gifts to man ; but we read that the Israel- 
ites were cured of the serpent's bite by means of the brazen ser- 
pent ; Naaman was healed of the leprosy by means of the waters 
of Jordan ; the blind man in the ninth chapter of St. John had his 
sight restored by means of the pool of Siloam. And yet of all 
hese intervening things, those words of the wisdom of Solomon 
are true : " He that turned towards it was not saved by the thing 
he saw, but by Thee that art the Saviour of all ! " And so with 
spiritual gifts. In His sacraments, our Lord has made an out- 
ward and visible sign a means of our receiving the grace. Not 



THE CHURCH. H3 

that He might and does not impart the grace without the ordained 
sign, but that we have a distinct promise and security that if we 
faithfully do the outward thing, He will assuredly impart the in- 
ward. Nicodemus wished to know how a man could enter the 
kingdom of heaven. By being born again, Christ said. And how 
born again ? " Born of water and of the spirit," was the reply. 
Nicodemus, afraid of losing caste if he professed Christianity 
openly, wished to have the inward and spiritual grace, without the 
outward and visible sign. But Christ insisted upon it. The water 
as well as the spirit was needful to the new birth. And so when 
charging His apostles to make disciples by baptizing, He added* 
11 He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved." If ever the 
outward sign might have been dispensed with, it would have been 
in the case of Cornelius, on whom the Holy Ghost had already 
descended ; or in the case of Saul, who had been converted by 
the Lord himself. But no ! Cornelius must now be baptized, was 
St. Peter's first thought. "Why tarriest thou? Arise and be 
baptized, and wash away thy sins," were the words of Ananias to 
Saul. 

Twelve months before the institution of the Lord's Supper, our 
blessed Lord had spoken at some length of this inward spiritual 
feeding of His body and blood. The discourse is given in the 
sixth chapter of St. John. The whole of that discourse is antici- 
patory of that gift or grace of spiritual food which Christ intended 
to bequeath to His church ; and which He was subsequently 
pleased to ensure to His church by a special form of conveyance 
in the Eucharist. Christ is first speaking to the Jews in their 
synagogue — in dark sayings as usual. They had asked for bread 
from heaven like that which Moses had given. Christ replies 
that God will give them the true bread from heaven, of which the 



i44 THE CHURCH. 

manna from the sky was only a type. He had come down from 
heaven. He was the true bread from heaven. The Jews murmur 
at our Lord's thus speaking of Himself as one who had come 
down from heaven. Our Lord replies that none can receive the 
truth of His divinity, unless he be " taught of God ;" and that to 
those who thus receive Him, He will be (as He had before said), 
a life-giving food. " I am the living Bread which came down 
from heaven ; if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live for ever." 
At this point, namely in the 51st verse, our Lord introduces a new 
thought. His thought heretofore had been simply : "I am the 
bread," — ''he that eateth me." Now for the first time He men- 
tions flesh, and two verses later, flesh and blood; and now for the 
first time He uses the future tense : " The bread that / will give 
is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world ; " pointing 
to a definite time when He would give the world this bread, 
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son 
of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." To the 
Jews in the Capernaum Synagogue, all this was unintelligible, 
and to them no further explanation was given. Afterwards, alone 
with His disciples, He finds that they had failed to understand 
Him. To them He vouchsafes an explanation. And first, of His 
having come down from heaven ; that is, of His divinity. He 
promises them a convincing proof in His approaching ascension. 
Then as to the life-giving efficacy of His flesh, He explains the 
necessity of its sacrifice and consequent glorification. His mere 
flesh as it then was could have no such efficacy ; it must be glori- 
fied and spiritualized. Then and then only could it be life-giving 
food. " The words I have been using," or rather, " the things I 
have been speaking of — Flesh and Blood — are Spirit and Life." 
Thus we have in the Capernaum discourse, the doctrine of that 



THE CHURCH. 145 

inward and spiritual feeding on Christ, of which the Eucharist 
(instituted twelve months afterwards) is our surest means and 
pledge. We close the sixth chapter of St. John, and open the 
passages that record the institution of the Lord's supper. Re- 
membering (as His Apostles would also remember) His promise 
that He would bequeath to them this spiritual food, and wishing 
to solemnly ratify it, at supper the night before He suffered, our 
Lord took up what lay before Him on the table — the bread and 
the wine. He broke the bread (so was His body to be broken) 
and delivered it to each, saying, " Take, eat ; this is my body." 
He poured forth the wine (so was His blood to be shed) and de- 
livered the cup to each, saying : " Drink ye all of it ; this is the 
blood of the New Covenant ; " or according to two of the four 
accounts, " This is the New Covenant in my Blood." His apos- 
tles could not fail to understand their Lord. While they saw Him 
thus solemnly place the bread in their hands, calling it His body 
and the cup calling it his blood of the covenant, they could not 
fail to understand that He was intending to make bread and wine 
whenever so used in remembrance of Him, not only sacred 
pledges and symbols, but means of grace whereby He would con- 
vey to His church in perpetuity the spiritual food which He had 
promised. 

We have seen how our Lord ministers His salvation in 
and through the church, and it is no disparagement in the 
least to the salvation which it unquestionably promised within 
the church, that salvation is granted by Him on other terms. The 
grace bestowed through the sacraments of the church, the privi- 
leges conferred on her ministers, are real, not imaginary, positive, 
but not exclusive. I am a believer myself in their efficacy to the 
fullest extent. I am an utter disbeliever in there being any 



146 THE CHURCH. 

promise whatever of exclusiveness attached to them. To appre- 
ciate this question we must begin by examining the commission 
or patent granted to the apostles themselves. It is as real, ample 
and permanent, as it well could be ; but I cannot discover a ves- 
tige of exclusiveness about it, as far as God is concerned. He 
guarantees them all that He confers upon them, without limitation, 
but He never limits Himself to act through them alone. On the 
contrary, there are distinct traces of a different intention on His 
part from the first. Take their earliest mission ; but read it in St. 
Luke, the companion of St. Paul, — the earliest who wrote more 
particularly for us Gentiles. " Then He called His twelve disci- 
ples together," says St. Luke, " and gave them power and authority 
over all devils, and to cure diseases. And He sent them to 
preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick." They de- 
parted on their mission shortly afterwards. What is announced 
in the sixth verse of the very next chapter? After these things 
the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two by two 
before His face into every city and place whither He Himself 
would come;" observing to them merely that "the harvest was 
great, and the laborers few ; " a truth, unfortunately, which has 
never ceased to be less true since the church began. 

The twelve were not consulted in any way by Him on commis- 
sioning these new laborers ; the commission given to them was 
substantially their own repeated. The achievements of the sev- 
enty were rather of the two the more striking. Nor was this all 
by any means. Between the commissioning of the seventy and of 
the twelve, while the twelve were literally engaged on their first 
mission, they were confronted by a scene which caused them no 
small offence. " Master," said St. John, evidently reminded of 
the occurrence by the last remark of his master, and what had 



THE CHURCH. 147 

given rise to it, " Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy 
name, and we forbid him, because he followeth not with us." And 
Jesus said unto him : " Forbid him not, for he that is not against 
us is for us." And St. Mark adds, " There is no man which shall 
do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me." 
Take a later privilege bestowed on the twelve. The privilege to 
which I allude was originally conferred upon one. " I will give 
unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou 
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou 
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." No promise 
whatever at that time passed His lips to the eleven others. Two 
chapters later, for only St. Matthew records either incident, their 
turn came, St. Peter being with them, but without any more no- 
tice being taken of him, than of them previously. For without 
consulting or referring to him in any way, our Lord reiterated His 
promise to them in the exact words in which it had been made to 
St. Peter. These surely must be considered strong indications on 
His part to reserve to Himself freedom of action, so that 
while binding Himself to act at all times through Flis apostles 
and their successors, He abstained signally from binding Himself 
never to act excepting through them. What are we to infer from 
all this, but that union with Himself is what God has most at 
heart for us under the Gospel ; that union amongst ourselves is 
desired, aye, passionately desired by Him next, but only so far as 
it will subserve this. He would have all men to be saved. They 
should " come from the East and from the West, and sit down in 
the kingdom of heaven, with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," whether 
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew them or not. In all ages, "in 
every nation," said St. Peter, rising superior to his own prejudices, 
" he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with 



148 THE CHURCH. 

Him." The very first sermon preached on behalf of the gospel 
contained these words : " Think not to say within yourselves, we 
have Abraham for our father ; for I say unto you that God is able 
of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." We may think 
it our duty to serve the Lord with the seventy in the tabernacle, 
but in the spirit of the great law-giver, we should say of those who, 
like Eldad and Medad, prophesy in the camp : " Would God that 
all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put 
His spirit upon them !" Faith is a child-like principle. It doesn't 
pick and choose. Such a faith does not depend upon numbers, 
or antiquity, or councils, or parliament ; it sees the truth in light, 
and the truth makes it free ; it will believe with two or three — it 
would believe if it were alone. 

I Some people only engage themselves about the Lord's death — 
that Christ died for them ^is their whole religion. And truly that 
Christ died for us is an assurance of infinite love. But true faith 
opens the heart to all that the Lord is, to all that the Lord has 
done for us, and is doing for us now as the living Saviour, 
the King of Kings, and the Lord of Lords. God in Christ is 
the foundation truth of the Church. Thus the only confession 
required of the Ethiopian who applied to Philip for baptism 
was — " I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of. God." It was 
this great comprehensive truth, the holy Apostle Peter had con- 
fessed, when Jesus said to him, " On this Rock I will build my 
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." It has 
love, light, beauty, coherency, work and power, and the arbitrary 
claims of ecclesiastical dogmatism melt before it like the snow- 
flakes on the river — like the [murky darkness before the rising 
day — like the mist before the sun. The confession of this truth 
made St. Peter not (petra) a rock but (petros) a stone. Every man 



THE CHURCH. H9 

who receives this foundation truth, becomes also (petros) a stone. 
Hence St. Peter himself says of true Christians : " Ye also 
as living stones are built up a spiritual house, a holy priest- 
hood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus 
Christ." The Lord is the grand Rock, we are the derived stones. 
Our blessed Lord also said to St. Peter, " I will give unto thee the 
keys of the Kingdom of Heaven," and "exaggerated claims of eccle- 
siastical power have been based thereon. Every soul which receives 
the Saviour's truths in love, receives from Him the keys of Heaven. 
What are " the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven ? " Why the knowl- 
edge of such things as constitute heaven ; knowledge lets us into 
the subject of which it treats ; it opens it. It is a popular idea that 
hereafter there are to be two inclosures, one of which is salvation, 
and the other perdition, and that the soul prepared in the dying 
hour by absolution, finds entrance to heaven. But what have 
inclosures to do with it? The work of reconciliation is no 
external thing, but a work performed within. It comes from the 
blotting out of sin by the presence of God's own love, and words 
of absolution avail nothing, without this power working with us. 
Mere forgiveness of sin does not confer heaven, for there can be no 
blessedness without holiness, and there can be no holiness with- 
out a supreme love of what God loves, and a supreme hate of what 
God hates. Thus the question arises, can a man so disarrange 
his nature, as not to attain a permanent and predominant desire 
to be holy, and can omniscience force upon such a character 
heavenly blessedness? It is a maxim of a modern school of phi- 
losophy that unused powers become extinct, and that as a result 
of it, a new species is formed. Mr. Darwin says : " Give me time 
enough, and I will produce a new species ; give me time enough, 
and I will produce any species." 



150 THE CHURCH. 

Without assenting to Mr. Darwin's conclusions, we must admit 
the fact that tendencies multiply themselves. Our tendency is to 
crystalize our habits. Now, it is wholly conceivable that when a 
soul loves the right, and looks in the face of God, its aptitude to 
wrong-doing constantly decreases. Give time, and it shall be 
obliterated entirely. We shall have a new kind of being, a very 
archangel, utterly unable to commit sin. On the other hand, is it 
not conceivable that the tendencies of the wrong-doer to commit 
sin may become fixed : that all the right teeling within the heart 
may lose its power of resistance to evil forever, so that "if the tree 
fall toward the South or toward the North, there it shall be ? " What- 
ever may be our convictions concerning these abstruse questions, 
there is no need of any material hell to inflict penalties for un- 
broken obedience. I am speaking of deliberate sin, of sin against 
light. If I were to speak of the heathen, or those who live in the 
slums of life, I should be compelled to use another kind of argu- 
ment. The vital force may slumber in certain seeds for centuries, 
but let them once germinate, and they become subject to new and 
more perilous conditions of existence ; a few hours of neglect or 
drought would be destructive of all life within them. In like man- 
ner some of those who in this life never feel the sunshine of God's 
grace and truth, may have yet within them the gift of God through 
Jesus Christ — the germ of everlasting life, that in the hereafter 
may germinate into endless growth and fruition in holiness and 
heavenly bliss. 

But although God does not restrict the grace of His salva- 
tion to the Church, what an inestimable privilege it is to be 
in communion with the holy Church which God in Christ has 
taken into covenant with Himself! — that blessed communion 
through which " earthly things are joined with heavenly, and things 



THE CHURCH. 1 51 

visible and things invisible made one " — that unites the life of the 
Christian ages and gathers the hallowed memories of centuries ! 
Holding fast the truth of the Father, the Son our Saviour, the Holy 
Spirit, the Church universal, forgiveness, resurrection and eternal 
life, as set forth in the traditional "form of sound words ;" the 
Church is the same to-day as at first, in all its essential truth and 
fellowship. Preserving apostolic order and historical succession 
in its ministry, it is no invisible, inorganic thing. Embracing in 
its membership all of every creed and sect that are baptized into 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, according to the ancient 
rule — " In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things 
charity ;" the Church is not Greek, nor Roman, nor Protes- 
tant, but Catholic. Founded on the rock of Peter's confession — 
faith in the Incarnate God ; observing the simple symbolic, but 
sacred ordinances of His household, as they join us in the fellow- 
ship of love to God and man ; having the inspired and sure Word 
of God, untrammeled by sectarian glosses, as its charter, its unity 
is in its Divine Head — God in the image of man drawing all men 
to Himself by making them like Himself, or, as some theologians 
express it with a twist, clothing them in His righteousness. This 
is the unity that cannot be broken. It is something for all times, 
for all places, for all intellects, for all hearts. This is the sacred 
bone of the Church, "for other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid, which is Jesus Chiist." To this Holy Catholic and 
Apostolic Church, this blessed communion of Saints, uniting earth 
with heaven, the living and the dead, is the promise given, that 
M the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Circling the earth 
with its sympathies, conquering the world by its earnestness, and 
weaving for the King when He shall return in His beauty with His 
spouse, a woof of hearts reaching back through all time, and con- 



152 THE CHURCH. 

veying in all its threads, the electric fire first kindled at the cross 
and communicated to the twelve. 

Scientific inroads, some fear, are going to touch religion. They 
are going to touch it. It is vain to shut our eyes in this matter. 
There is a revolution impending, and it is impossible to say that 
the modern revelations of science, and the old Christian theories 
can co-exist. But true Christian holiness, gentleness, honor, 
love — the Kingdom of God that is within — science will not dis- 
turb. The Church of God must endure forever, and grow and cover 
the earth. There will be ebbings and flowings, and in his human 
frailty the Christian may be more or less despondent, or raised 
by these ; but he knows that whatever else may happen, the time 
will certainly come when " the earth will be full of the knowledge 
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Before the rising tide 
of the broad ocean of Catholic-Evangelic-Truth, the petty barriers 
of sect and schism will be swept away, like the foot prints on the 
shore. The final purpose of God in the creation, is to form a 
heaven of human beings, who can become the recipients of His 
life and blessedness forever. There is a human link in the chain 
of causes and effects, through which the Divine power reaches its 
ends and accomplishes its purpose, but we may rest assured that 
God will complete what he has graciously begun. 

In these dissertations I have resisted doctrines that seem to me 
essentially false and of evil tendency, but I have also resisted 
some doctrines simply on the ground that they were questions, 
the solution of wnich belongs to a future world. The Church 
coming down through the centuries, has gathered up an endless 
number of formularies and confessions, and I would not dispute 
their usefulness, but the relative emphasis of these outward in- 
strumentalities in the minds of men. They are advocated and 



THE CHURCH. 153 

defended with such ardor and universality, that it would seem as 
if such things were regarded as of transcendent importance. But 
they are not the centre, not the main thing, they are incidental, 
collateral, auxiliary, and if there be nothing else but these, there 
is nothing. 

The Church is made a fetich, when attendance there is made a 
substitute for Christian life. The Lord's Supper is made a fetich 
when consecrated bread is made to do duty for a consecrated heart. 
The creed and formula are made a fetich when they are allowed 
to stand between us and the Bible. The Bible itself is made a 
fetich, when it is allowed to stand between us and God ; when the 
letter is put in the place of the spirit, when the lamp is made 
an idol of, instead of being used as a light to guide our steps. 
The Bible, the Church, the Sacraments, the Creeds and Catechisms 
of every name, are to be judged by their fitness to make men 
good, to bring men into living communion with God, into Chris- 
tian fellowship with one another, and into harmony with the spir- 
itual laws of the universe. 



